Slaughtered pigs at Brault's Market in Troy, which is a USDA certified slaughterhouse. VTD/Anne Galloway
The state Agency of Agriculture and Rural Vermont are at it again — this time over a misunderstanding about on-farm slaughter regulations.
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The state says if meat is sold from a farm, the animals must be slaughtered under federal guidelines. Rural Vermont, an advocacy organization for small farms and local food growers, argues that state statute allows farmers to contract with consumers directly for animal husbandry and slaughtering services.
It’s the second time in six months the farm advocacy group has had a run-in with the Agency of Agriculture. Last winter, the agency shut down Rural Vermont’s popular raw milk yogurt, ice cream and cheesemaking classes. By May, the advocacy group had persuaded lawmakers to pass S.105, which clarified that raw milk may now be sold for personal consumption. Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the bill in May. The classes have been reinstated.
The current disagreement between the agency and Rural Vermont is over the on-farm slaughter of animals that have been raised for consumers under contract.
The practice, which is of growing popularity in the localvore movement, allows individuals to own animals and pay a farm to raise them. The animals are then slaughtered on the farm, processed and sent to the owner for consumption.
The state calls this practice “custom slaughter” and says such services are subject to federal sanitation requirements. According to Randy Quenneville, chief of the meat inspection program at the Agency of Agriculture, animals killed on a farm for consumption by anyone other than the property owner must be slaughtered in a sanitary room, as defined by federal regulation.
“If you’re [slaughtering] it yourself, you raised it, it’s your baby,” said Quenneville, but “as soon as you’re doing it for somebody else, you’re a custom slaughterer.”
Agency policies are lenient for farmers who raise their own livestock for meat and slaughter them for their own consumption. The regulations are much stricter when slaughtered animals are sold to outside parties. Custom slaughterers are required to have a sanitary room with hot and cold water as well as washable floors, walls and ceilings, said Quenneville.
Jared Carter, director of Rural Vermont, a Montpelier-based organization that advocates for farmers, said a 2008 Vermont law allows on-farm slaughter of animals contracted to be raised by the farmer.
“Clearly the Legislature did pass a law, and we have to assume that that law meant what it says,” said Carter. The 2008 law, Act 207, states that “An itinerant custom slaughterer may slaughter livestock owned by an individual who has entered into a contract with a person to raise the livestock on the farm where it is intended to be slaughtered.”
Quenneville said the law is superseded by federal regulation.
Carter said Act 207 falls under an exemption, which states that “The custom slaughter by any person of cattle, sheep, swine, or goats delivered by the owner thereof for such slaughter … exclusively for use, in the household of such owner.”
Quenneville said the Agency of Agriculture is working with Rural Vermont to educate farmers about sanitation and the creation of sanitary rooms. He suggested farmers could renovate a barn room for that purpose. Adherence to federal standards, he said, “will help in the long run to bolster the infrastructure and make more local foods available.”
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If you read the exemption that Mr. Carter is referring to -9 CFR 303.1(a)(1)- it says THE SLAUGHTER BY ANY INDIVIDUAL OF LIVESTOCK OF HIS OWN RAISING and the preparation by him and transportation in commerce of the carcasses, parts thereof, meat and meat food products of such livestock EXCLUSIVELY FOR USE BY HIM AND MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD AND HIS NON-PAYING GUEST AND EMPLOYEES. Act 207 allows for someone other than the owner to raise and slaughter the animal it does NOT allow the farmer to slaughter without any sanitary considerations, in fact Mr. Carter qoutes -9CFR 303.1(a)(2)and leaves out the last line which states, “Provided the following requirements are met by such a custom operator;” the requirements are the sanitary facility.
Also Brault’s Market is a state inspected facilty and there is no such thing as a “certified” facility USDA or otherwise
One other thing as most laws go, the statute is the law and the regulations define the law, so to take one without the other is like reading a paragraph of a book and understanding the entire story!
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I THINK U CAN TAKE YOUR REG AND GIVE THEM TO THE FOOD AND DRUG ADM THAT LEAVE US SICK WITH ECOLI—-VEGGIES NOT TESTED , LETTUCE, ETC…MAD COW DES….A FARCE AND SO R U…IT IS A SHAME THE RULES PLANNED FOR THIS COUNTRY PUTTING ANGER INFRONT OF HONOR………..U WILL NEVER STOP FARMERS FROM FEEDING THEIR FAMILIES THE WAY THEIR FATHERS DID FOR THEM—–HAVE U EVER HEARD OF ANY SICKNESS FROM THEIR HOMES????? HAVE U HEARD ABOUT CHINA AND JAPAN AND THE SHIT [HUMAN] INTO FOOD SOURSES??????? LOOK IT UP AND LEAVE THE FARMERS OF AMERICA ALONEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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Yuck! As a vegetarian, that photo makes it hard to read the story.
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As farmers we need more access to meat processing options. Consumers need more ways to get meat locally. It makes sense to have many different levels of processing available.
At the homestead the government should not be at all involved.
With direct sales from the farm gate to individuals for their own consumption then some additional basic hygiene and sanitation requirements make sense. You’re cutting meat for someone else. Of course, if someone wants to take the live animal home and do the slaughter at their place then the homestead rule should again prevail – they can do it their way at home.
When selling through stores and restaurants more precautions such as USDA or State inspection are needed because the meat travels further, is handled by more people and there is less direct link between the farmer and consumer.
At our family farm we raise pastured pigs and make weekly deliveries primarily to local area stores and restaurants as well as a few direct sales to individuals. We use a USDA inspected facility in Mass since we can’t find good local slaughter, butchering and smoking. It is a long drive every week. A better solution would be if we could do it here. To that end we’re in the process of building our own USDA/State inspected on-farm slaughterhouse, butcher shop and smokehouse. Getting there is a process and each day we make progress.
My wife especially looks forward to the day she won’t be leaving at 3 AM to make that long seven hour drive to the butcher as she does now. For customers it means more options and custom cuts. For the pigs it means less stress since they will never leave our farm.
-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
West Topsham, Vermont
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Regardless whether or not a farmer or consumer is ALLOWED to slaughter an animal under unsanitary conditions….why would they want to? Why would anyone want to eat products produced under unsanitary conditions? It seems a sanitary location should be legally required in any case where the butcher and the consumer is not the same individual or within the same household.
Remove the politics and let common sense reign.
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Friends: In “Rural Vermont, Agency of Ag spar over on-farm slaughter rules” (VTDigger, June 21, 2011) we see that the VAAF&M has an ongoing interest in applying pressure to Vermont’s most vulnerable farmers. VAAF&M has exhibited this bias for decades even as it watched the few largest Vermont dairies consolidate thousands of small to medium-sized farms. In fact one might argue that farm attrition in Vermont is the direct result of agency complicity. The commonly heard justification for small farm failure is “inefficiency.” What purpose is being served when Vermont has lost 93% of its dairy farms since WWII and the agency supports the paradigm driving the trend? Why does this demonstrably progressive governor not adopt a demonstrably progressive agriculture policy?
The following article is interesting not only because midwestern Republicans are advocating cutting farm subsidies, but because counterintuitively farm subsidies boost yields beyond the markets capacity to absorb the surplus driving prices down not up and that hurts not helps farmers and rural economies. Vermont should do likewise to help its farmers: cut all subsidies, re-internalize input costs (back to the farm out of the environment), lower production, raise milk prices. Scary? It is basic economics.
New York Times, June 23, 2011
In Battle Over Subsidies, Some Farmers Say No
By RON NIXON
Editor’s note: Link substituted for article text due to copyright laws.
James H. Maroney, Jr.
1033 Bullock Road
Leicester, VT 05733
Cell: (802) 236-7431
maroney.james@gmail.com
web: http://www.jamesmaroney.com
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Thanks, all, for the interesting article, comments, and links. Seems one solution–at least part of it–could be for VT Agency of Ag, Food and Markets to offer financial support for ventures such as Water Jeffries describes to increase the number of allowable on-farm slaughter spaces for family farms and homesteads willing to raise livestock for their neighbors. Isn’t the role of VAA, F&M to SUPPORT an increase in agriculture throughout the state? I agree that clean facilities are most desirable; we know it’s the small profit margins in small scale agriculture and the lack of capitol to expand (in addition to labor intensiveness of sustainable practices) that limits diversified small scale ag. growth. I agree with J. Maroney’s statement,that Vermont should “adopt a demonstrably progressive agriculture policy” (although I also believe in farm subsidies, but for the smaller scale and newer ag. ventures, especially those willing to diversify using “best practices”). We need more small farms/ homesteads who, like Sugar Mountain Farm, are willing to expand to meet local needs. And many of them may need a little boost, to balance the scales against what most of us understand is a national and global economy tilted against their potential success.
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Renee: Although I sympathize with your support for subsidies for small farmers, it is essential before spending taxpayer money that the state apply means testing, i.e., only support what is empirically promoting the effect the citizens ultimately want. The state has not done this and has squandered millions and decades “helping” dairy farmers by relieving them of taxes and other expenses which the farmers convert to gobbling up their smaller brethren and adding new capacity to boost yields. The state must acknowledge that large conventional dairy farms are not competitive and have no business model that makes a profit without polluting the lake and withdraw support both implicit and explicit. The state has yet to decide what kind of agriculture its citizens need and want; that determination must precede means testing.
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Ironically, we’re not really doing much in the way of expansion in terms of production – e.g., animal count. Our main focus with building our own on-farm USDA/State inspected slaughterhouse, butcher and smokehouse is such that we gain control over the entire process from breeding to delivery to our customers. Right now we are at the mercy of the butcher. One butcher we were working with retired, another said he was going to retire (hasn’t yet), another burnt down, the list goes on. The issue is it takes ten months from breeding to market and we need to know that we’ll have slaughter and butchering capacity for our livestock so we can get our meat to our customers every week of the year. Customers depend on us to supply their stores and restaurants weekly – they have their menus and stocking planned out months in advance. By bringing this critical and constricted link in the process on farm and under our control we increase the security and sustainability of our farm.
As an added note, we don’t get subsidies. I read that 96% of subsidies go to Big Ag. I’m against subsidies. Let them try to compete on a level playing field. If they’re to big to fail, let them. Get small or get out, to paraphrase the USDA of the 1970′s.