The latest posting on long-time persistent violative raw milk seller Amos Miller illustrates at least two costs of permitting litigants to abuse legal process: 1. It purports to allow illegal interstate commerce in a prohibited dangerous product, raw milk. 2. perhaps even more problematic it makes a mockery of public health laws and government enforcement litigation to enforce them, because courts have allowed second, third, and fifth chances to persistent violators.
I hope USDA (and FDA if within its jurisdiction) will promptly enforce the previous judicial recognition that this interstate traffic is illegal and dangerous to the public health. Like other national examples of persistent and notorious violators and lenient procedures, this reduces public confidence in our claim that we are a nation of laws.
I hope that federal judges will not continue to tolerate Miller’s illegal interstate shipments of regulated products, and will reassure the consuming public and legal participants in the dairy and food industry that the law matters, and that defiant violators cannot exempt themselves from the law because of their persistence.
