We have discussed the current difficulty in meat processing for small producers, especially since the beginning of COVID-19. We work with members on using the custom slaughter exemptions to the Federal Meat Inspection Act. Now we need you to tell the USDA how important access to custom processing is.

 
USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service (FSIS) has recently asked its Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection (NACMPI)—to provide recommendations on several aspects of custom exempt slaughterhouses. We need your help to push for good recommendations that support small farmers and consumers who want to purchase locally and support farmers and the local economy.

As a reminder, custom exempt slaughterhouses are regulated and inspected by the government under federal law, but they do not have to have an inspector on-site at all times, and they have reduced paperwork burdens. Meat processed in a custom slaughterhouse can only be provided back to the person(s) who owned the animal when it was processed.

So these custom slaughterhouses primarily process meat for hunters and homesteaders. They also process animals that are co-owned by multiple people under “cow shares,” where each person owns one-half or one-fourth of the animal. But that can be hard to arrange since few people want to buy that much meat at one time because of the upfront cost or the space needed for storage.

In the last two years, three states—Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska—have adopted laws that make it easier for farmers and consumers to work with custom slaughterhouses. All three laws have a variation on “animal shares” or “herd shares” that allow individuals to buy less than one-quarter of a cow at a time, and still be recognized as a co-owner when it comes to getting the meat after processing.

All of these laws fit within the current USDA regulations because the agency’s current regulations do NOT limit the number of co-owners of an animal. But one of the questions that FSIS is asking the Advisory Committee is whether it should adopt a new rule “to set a numerical limit on the number of individuals allowed to co-own an animal presented for slaughter/ processing under the custom exemption provision.” The agency is also asking if it should adopt rules to prevent people from organizing into membership groups to jointly own animals.

If the agency were to do that, it would block the Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska laws—and prevent other states from adopting similar laws. This would be going in the WRONG direction!

We want the agency to go in the other direction: take steps to support laws like these.

 

You can read the recommendation our allies at Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance made to USDA this summer HERE.