The raid on an Amish family farm is the direct result of government protectionism of big agriculture through needless and cumbersome regulations.
Amos Miller is an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania who has become a thorn in the side of the State of Pennsylvania and the federal government for his selling of raw milk and other unregulated products.
Shortly after The Jungle came out, J. Ogden Armour, owner of one of the biggest packing firms, wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post defending government inspection of meat and insisting that the large packers had always favored and pushed for inspection.
No packer can do an interstate or export business without Government inspection.
The large meat packers were enthusiastically in favor of the bill, designed as it was to bring the small packers under federal inspection.
We are now and have always been in favor of the extension of the inspection, also to the adoption of the sanitary regulations that will insure the very best possible conditions.... We have always felt that Government inspection, under proper regulations, was an advantage to the live stock and agricultural interests and to the consumer. One advantage to imposing uniform sanitary conditions on all meatpackers is that the burden of the increased costs would fall more heavily on the smaller than on the bigger plants, thereby crippling the smaller competitors even further.
Forcing smaller farms like that of Miller to comply with the regulations imposed by a bureaucratic institution is an easy way to increase costs and force them from the market.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/big-agricultures-protectionism-targets-amish
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