The Highwire with Del Bigtree - THE FIGHT FOR FOOD FREEDOM RAGES IN PA

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Organic Amish farmer, Amos Miller, has been in a years-long legal battle with the state of Pennsylvania for distributing meat and dairy products not processed according to USDA guidelines. Is this just an attempt by government to enforce regulatory control over independent farmers? FarmMatch CEO, Max Kane, joins Del live from the courthouse where hundreds were there to support Amos and the fight for food freedom.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

What if food was your medicine? What it was the only thing you found that worked? What if getting raw milk or raw dairy somehow could change your gut biome, which had been destroyed because of the vaccine? And none of the pharmaceutical products were working. Doctors were throwing up their hands as you're riding in pain every day and throughout the night. And then all of a sudden, the only place you can get that food gets shut down. That is what is at stake. That's what is in a conversation today.

because there's a hearing going on with Amos Miller, who is a farmer, an Amish farmer up in Pennsylvania. We've talked about this before. Here's just a flashback of his story. Take a look at this. A Lancaster County farmer facing fines and could possibly go to jail. The government is arguing that the farm isn't adhering to federal regulatory requirements concerning food. You have this back and forth between the giant empire of the U.S. federal government and this tiny little farm in Burdenham, Pennsylvania. Amos Miller lives quietly, raising cows, chickens, sheep, and camels. He sells the unprocessed meat and dairy products to a private association. Prosecutors condemn his, quote,

singular, historic willingness to flout democratically enacted federal food safety laws. They're coming after an independent, successful farmer who takes out the government middlemen and provides food directly to his community. My understanding is that the issue comes with the fact that you're not using their prostitution. their processing plants that you are butchering your cattle yourself and delivering your product directly to the consumers and taking out that middleman. Yeah, I want to get USDA federal inspected. You have to either apply citric acid or bleach or possibly some steam, anything to prohibit

the bacteria from growing. And our membership base, they believe that using those treatments is basically more harmful to them than a small amount of bacteria. period is. They are trying to make a statement that they're doing is to keep the food supply safe. Well, that's a good question. Is the food supply safe means the cancer, diabetes, heart problems have skyrocketed the past few years. So I don't think that has very much standing. I am in the cooler of Amos Miller here in bird in hand, Pennsylvania. All this food has been sitting in the cooler detained for about a month now.

Raw milk, it'll ferment over time. This jar right here exploded a little bit from the pressure. Look at all this cheese here. Kiefer's, yogurt, way is unsafe. Look at this yellow butter right here. Look at all this butter. Shelves and shelves of butter. Can't sell maple syrup anymore.

Pickled beets, canned fermented vegetables. We've got the pencil, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, product under detention. We've got a whole other room back there. I mean, this is easy $100,000 dollars of food. This is really quite a shame. Well, there's a hearing going on right now as we speak, and standing outside of that courtroom is raw food enthusiast and CEO of farmmatch.com.

Max Kane joins me now. Max, how are you doing today? Awesome, Del. Nice to see you again. Good to see you. So give me a sense of what this case, what this trial is about today, please. Sure, absolutely. So this is about the people being able to buy food direct from a farmer, totally unregulated. Amos Miller's been a farmer at it for 20 years now in Burden Hand, Pennsylvania. He does not want any regulation. He wants to be able to sell his raw milk and cheese and raw milk products without regulation.

And this is the way the customers want to buy the food from him. They just don't want the government involved. in their food. And the state disagrees with them. The state wants to be able to come in and regulate it, tell them how they should be preparing the food. And there's a huge court rally in hearing here at the Lancaster County Courthouse about this today. So, you know, part of this, let me understand this. Amos's food is not going into any sort of like grocery store where you, it's like mixed in with a bunch of other foods. You won't know of someone. I mean, it's about tracking if someone gets sick. But these people are in a direct sort of membership, ownership deal, if you will, private membership with Amos saying, I want to buy directly from you.

That's what we're talking about here. Yeah, absolutely. So we're talking about a direct one-on-one consenting adults. I can come and check out how my food is raised. It's okay with me, almost as if the customer is the inspector. And that's really what the heart of this case is. And even farther, this case is really about body autonomy and form consent, being able to choose what goes in your body. And the customers, some have from around the country.

Many people have traveled from all over the country today. We have Sally Fallon Morell. She's going to be giving expert testimony today as an expert witness. We have some of the other witnesses and customers that are actually buying this food for medical reasons and health reasons, where when they buy food from the commercial grocery store and they, industrial food system, they get sick and they eat, they need to eat the food the way that Amos prepares it. So that's a lot about what this is about here today and speaks to the heart of why we're all here. I mean, Max, just because it's been a little while since we talked to you, but just very quickly,

for people that don't understand why you would want, you know, raw milk, like the pasteurization kills all of the bacteria in the milk. It kills all the bacteria in the cheese in these products. but people like you that are healing themselves from Crohn's, you actually want all of that bacteria. Is that right? You're going out of your way to find these natural bacteria. Yeah, absolutely. We want the bacteria in the milk.

We want the full bacteria that's normally supposed to be there in the milk. This is the way the milk was created. It helps people with different digestive problems and lactose intolerant and people who bodies cannot self-produce the enzymes that's needed to digest the milk. All right, you know what? I know that you've got someone standing by that sort of wants to tell their story. Why don't we talk to them? Who are we about to meet with here, Max? This is Noemi. Noemi, come out over here. This is one of Amos's customers. She traveled up from all the way from Flores, sunny, from sunny Florida up to Cold Pennsylvania,

and she's going to be testifying in front of the judge and probably about in the next hour. And this is the half. Uh-oh. All right. There we go. All right. Go ahead, Noemie. Tell us. why you get food from Amos Miller. Well, I was diagnosed with a chronic gastrointestinal disease in 2010. And three years ago, I came across Amos Miller's food

products, and I started trying them. It allowed me to come off my medication and remain in remission for two years. And my body to heal from all those medicines. My disease is active. I am not healed because I do have the disease, but it did allow me to be that period in remission. As of February 12, I'm back on medication.

I haven't been able to get his products. So for me, it's a matter of living in a healthier way and with the freedom of having to have a live without being on FDA-approved medication. So you're saying that when you get the food from AMS, you don't have to take the medication, but when you buy a store-bought food, that's when you have to be on these pharmaceutical drugs.

Is that right? Exactly, exactly. When I do commercial products, I have to be on medication. I have to be on pharmaceuticals. there's no way my body can process it well that about sums it up though i mean these people are all right well max i want to thank you we're in and out with the mic thank you for being there we we understand what's taking place and just very quickly max here's here's my issue this

really seems like a solution looking for a problem um and when we think about it this is a direct consumer it's going straight to the consumer as you said they get to inspect this food themselves And if the whole idea is what it sounds like the USDA is saying is, well, what if there's a listeria outbreak, how are we going to track it back to your farm? Well, the truth is, is it's going to be really easy that people buying from me know who they got it from. You're not, if they're in the hospital, you'd be able to ask them what happened. Well, I've got food from that farm. They didn't go to a store. They didn't not have contact.

They didn't know who the third party in the, you know, in between person was. There was no third party. So this entire argument seems bogus to me. Hit that mic one more time and let me just get a final statement from you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely dull. That's what this is about. I mean, if we want to be able to track our food, it's so much easier to track if you're buying Farm Direct.

The whole idea that we need to have 20 middlemen and not know where our food came from and buy a jug of milk in the store that probably... All right. We lost here, but I got you. Thank you very much, Max, for joining us. Folks, he's got a great website, farmmatch.com. This website allows you to connect with any organic farmers near you that are part of this direct-to-consumer sales that's going on so that you can get it straight from the farmer. You can go inspect that farm.

See how those cows are being raised. See how your meat is being slaughtered if you like. I mean, this is really just a different, I mean, shouldn't we be allowed to live our lives the way, we want. Do we really need the government inserting itself between transactions between one person and another person? In this case, me and a farm, this is what's at stake here. And it's just part of the sort of crushing takeover of government regulations that really, by the way, at the heart of this, is the industry loves this, right? The drug companies want you to have to do $100 million randomized controlled trials to prove that your vitamin C is safe. And if you can't, you take it off

the market. Farma, big ag, they love these regulations because it takes all of the small farmers out of the way. They can't adhere to all these rules. They don't need to. Those rules are designed when, as Mack said, you have 25 middlemen between you and some farm and truckers and no one knows where it came from except some QR code. You don't need that when you're involved in, you know, farm to table purchasing of your food. So we're going to watch this very closely. This is something that I can is looking at. We're looking at helping on cases like this.