IPFS News Link • Food
Amish Dairy Farmer Selling Raw Milk Won’t Be Cowed by FDA
• thenewamerican.comMilk may do a body good, but selling it without the government’s stamp of approval does not. Dan Allgyer, an Amish dairy farmer, is finding that out the hard way. The federal government is trying to slap a permanent injunction on him preventing him from selling his cows’ product to willing customers in other states — all because Allgyer and his customers prefer to trade in milk that has not been pasteurized.
The sale of unpasteurized, or raw, milk is legal in Pennsylvania, where
Allgyer lives. In Maryland, where some of his customers live, it is
not. The Food and Drug Administration has decided that interstate sales
of raw milk, particularly when the state for which the milk is destined
bans its sale, are illegal; and that is why Allgyer now finds himself in
hot moo juice with the feds.
Currently a food-buying club in Maryland called Grassfed on the Hill
sends a truck to Allgyer’s farm to purchase and pick up his milk. They
then transport it back to their home state, where it is distributed to
club members in private homes. Allgyer is not personally selling the
milk in Maryland at all.
The FDA, whose headquarters are in Silver Spring, Maryland, apparently
got wind of this arrangement and launched an investigation. The agency
spent over a year and countless tax dollars on an undercover
infiltration of Grassfed on the Hill. Its agents joined the club under
assumed names, placed orders for milk, and went into private residences
to pick up their purchases. Then the FDA conducted an armed, pre-dawn
raid on Allgyer’s farm in April 2010, during which agents found raw milk
coolers marked for various destinations in Maryland. Now it had all the
evidence it needed to prove that Allgyer was engaged in the dastardly
act of selling raw milk across state lines.
The Department of Justice is asking U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence
Stengel for summary judgment to impose the injunction on Allgyer. All
the judge has to do is sign the government’s ready-made form, and
Allgyer will be banned from ever selling his milk to folks from out of
state again, at which point he will be “essentially … out of business,”
according to raw-milk advocate David Gumpert.
Actually, he doesn’t just get to be put out of business. The proposed
injunction provides for the added privilege of having his farm inspected
whenever FDA agents are bored or just have the urge, AND he gets to pay
big time for the privilege (at rates of $87.57 or $104.96 per hour,
plus 51 cents a mile for their travel, plus the regular government “per
diem” for meals and hotels). One inspection that lasts a day or two, and
involves two or three agents, who, of course, have to write up a
detailed report afterwards, could cost $10,000. Maybe they decide to do
it once a year, maybe once a month, maybe once a week. Whatever their
pleasure.
At the end of five years, Allgyer can tell the court he’s been a good
boy, and appeal to have the injunction lifted, and maybe it will be and
maybe it won’t. If not, the inspection arrangement continues.
2 Comments in Response to Amish Dairy Farmer Selling Raw Milk Won’t Be Cowed by FDA
How is it that this corporate fascist regime that has thugs with guns and badges running around plundering the people called the U.S. is referred to as a government?
The Amish, if you have noticed, are under a sustained attack to destroy their fiercely independent, self-sustaining, low-tech agrarian lifestyle. Late night comedians make jokes about them, and Amish farmers like Allgyer, strong pacifists, are raided by heavily armed swat teams just for selling raw milk. Other old-fashioned Amish products from their farms and cottage industries are often ridiculed, like fruitcakes, and their horse-drawn conveyances aren't spared either. The object is destroying a culture that has escaped the metered slavery most of us take as par for the course. The Amish proudly insist on self-reliance, Christian community, and wholesome old-fashioned ways and means, traditional values that keep them strong and healthy. The elitists cannot stand to see these people defy their efforts to enslave everyone in ungodly degrading servitude. Hence, the attacks on thje Amish, who government reports show earn more profit per acre with manual labor than the large-scale mechanized farmers. Gotta stop that!