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.”
