‘Big Win’ for Amish Farmer and Food Freedom in Raw Milk Case

Last week, the Commonwealth Court ruled that Amish farmers Amos and Rebecca Miller could continue to sell raw milk outside the state while the state's lawsuit against them moved through the courts.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania last week ruled that Amos and Rebecca Miller, farmers who produce raw milk, may continue to sell raw milk outside the state while a lawsuit filed by the state against them moves through the courts.

The court’s ruling upheld a March 2024 decision by a Lancaster County trial court, which concluded that the Millers were not clearly violating Pennsylvania statutes by selling their raw milk products outside Pennsylvania.

That court previously issued a preliminary injunction that completely blocked the Millers from selling raw milk. However, the court later modified the injunction, limiting it to blocking Millers’ raw sales only within Pennsylvania.

The Commonwealth Court also acknowledged that the Millers raised “potentially meritorious constitutional challenges” to Pennsylvania’s Milk Sanitation Law. These challenges involve the Commerce Clause, the Supremacy Clause, the right to travel, and the fundamental right to purchase “traditional foods directly from the producer of that food.”

Robert Barnes, the Millers’ attorney, celebrated the decision on X, formerly Twitter, calling it a “big win” for food freedom.

Barnes told The Defender that broad questions about raw milk and agriculture are at stake in the case. “The case of Amos Miller decides the future of food freedom in America — do we decide what we put in our bodies or does the government?”

A win for ‘food freedom’

Miller is an Amish farmer who owns and operates Amos Miller Organic Farm in Lancaster County where he produces cheese, meat, eggs and raw milk products. People who want to purchase his farm products join the farm as members and either travel to the farm to buy the products or have the farm ship them.

Federal law bans raw milk sales across state lines. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also makes it clear that it does not prohibit people from purchasing raw milk and transporting it across state lines for personal consumption, according to the National Agricultural Law Center.

Rules regarding raw milk sales within states vary from state to state. Currently, 18 states ban sales and 32 states allow them, although the conditions for sale vary.

In Pennsylvania, sellers must obtain a permit from the state Department of Agriculture to sell raw milk. The permit is contingent on testing and documentation requirements.

A separate permit from a different department is required to sell raw milk cheese, the only other raw milk product permitted for sale in the state.

Miller does not have a state-mandated license for retail raw milk sales. He told the court that such a permit would only allow him to sell milk and raw milk hard cheeses — a small portion of the raw milk products he produces, which also include butter, kefir and yogurt, Lancaster Farming reported.

Miller has clashed with the U.S. and Pennsylvania agriculture departments for years over his raw milk operation and his meat and poultry production.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture states on its website that raw milk is not safe to drink and the FDA warns that raw milk “puts all consumers at risk,” especially the elderly, immune-compromised, pregnant women and children. The public health agencies say that pasteurized milk, which has been heated to kill bacteria, is a far safer choice.

However, Miller’s clients argue his raw milk products are crucial for their health. Raw milk advocates say it is more nutritious than pasteurized milk and provides benefits for the immune system.

In January 2024, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided and searched Miller’s farm after a child in Michigan and one in New York got sick from E. coli allegedly linked to Miller’s raw dairy products.

Authorities seized farm products including sour cream, chocolate milk and ice cream, and detained many others, prohibiting their removal from the farm and effectively shutting down Miller’s business.

At the time, Barnes issued a statement saying that the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture violated its own rules and regulations during the search. He also alleged that the search warrant was “based on materially false statements in an affidavit by a high-ranking state official in an agency with a known grievance against independent farmers like Amos.”

Pennsylvania’s attorney general sued Miller to stop him from selling raw milk products without a permit. Officials also claimed that samples taken from Miller’s farm in January by Pennsylvania officials tested positive for a bacteria called listeria.

County Judge Thomas Sponaugle granted the state’s request for a preliminary injunction against Miller’s farm, prohibiting him from producing raw milk for anything other than his family’s consumption. However, the judge later amended the order to clarify that Miller was only prohibited from making and selling raw milk products within Pennsylvania.

The state appealed the decision, seeking to ban the Millers from selling raw milk products altogether until a trial court could decide the case.

The Millers challenged the allegations that they violated state laws by selling their products out-of-state. They argued that a preliminary injunction prohibiting out-of-state raw milk sales would bankrupt them. They would lose their farm and the case would be effectively ended before a court could hear the case on its merits.

In its ruling last week, the Commonwealth Court agreed with the lower court’s ruling that the Millers raised reasonable questions about the state law’s ambiguity and also made constitutional challenges that would be “more appropriately resolved after a full trial.”

Barnes told The Defender that the case against Miller is part of a broader government project to ban raw milk and that the court’s decision was a win for food freedom.

He said:

“Amos Miller, a fifth-generation Amish farmer from the heart of dairy country, produced tens of millions of food products for tens of thousands of Americans over a quarter century, using the best and healthiest techniques taught and trained by his father and his father before him. How do we know?

“The total number of customer complaints to any government agency for any food product of Amos Miller’s is a big fat zero, the highest known customer satisfaction rate of any farmer in America.

“Yet the government sought to shut him down and close his farm because they demanded 90% of raw milk products be banned from sale to anyone anywhere. This win for Amos Miller is a win for all small farmers, for the Amish and for everyone who cares about food freedom.”