Itinerant Custom Slaughter

Very good observations.

Here is the rub. While it may be legal for you to function as your own itinerant custom slaughterer, what are you going to do with those sides of meat? You don’t have a licensed facility to cut them up in. The only legal, acceptable thing you can do with that meat, according to the VAA, is cut it up yourself for your own use. Can’t sell it.

For that matter, if you hire an itinerant custom slaughterer (let’s say ICS for short), per the statute, to reduce your animal to sides of meat, then said custom slaughterer is also legally unable to do more than give you the sides to cut up yourself for your own use. You can’t sell it.

So your ICS owns an inspected custom shop in the same town? It’s illegal to transport the sides there to be processed. Animals must arrive alive (no downer law), at least domestic animals. Don’t ask me how this applies to deer, the bread-and-butter business of a typical custom shop, since they obviously don’t arrive alive.

However it appears that an ICS could slaughter an animal on-farm and then give the sides of meat to a buyer or buyers, and they could take the whole sides of meat home and cut them up there, themselves for their own use, dispose of their own renderings, make their own sausage, etc. Most buyers would prefer to hire the ICS to do this, either on-farm or in the ICS’s custom shop. But this is not allowed. That is not to say that the practice is not widespread, but it is an illegal trade, and many of those involved in it are fully aware of this (not that I know any personally ;)) As you rightly point out this practice is an extension of a very old local tradition and meets a strictly local need. It should not expose those involved to legal action by the VAA, but it does.

Seems to me that if the legislature were to draft an exemption to the no-downer law where it applies to livestock slaughtered at another location by the owner of a state-inspected custom shop, for purposes of custom sale only, then this would solve the problem.

@Carl Russell 26142 wrote:

I feel like it is coming to a point where we just need to do what we know is right, and what we know we have the rights to do in community with our neighbors. The legislative process is rife with compromises that basically tie up huge amounts of time and money, with little or nothing to show.

Like Erik says, I know folks(;)) who can get 20-30% more per pound for on-farm slaughtered meat sold directly to customers, than my friends who raise enough animals to be able to afford the slaughter/inspection pipeline. They also believe firmly in their right to farm and do business on their own terms (as long as they are not hurting others:)).

The question in my mind, is how do we as a community find a way to support these people so that the potential legal actions can be covered financially, and at the same time are used to make the change that logic requires?

Carl

I agree. The problems with the law are probably intractable as long as the VAA continues to try to recast our agriculture in terms acceptable to the USDA. Eventually they will probably have to prosecute someone for breaking some stupid reg or another. The whole community must be prepared to defend that individual legally and to make the resulting discussion open and public.

Jason, and others, Bob St. Peter, the founder of the Independent Food Project which sponsored those resolutions, may be the Keynote speaker at Rural Vermont’s annual meeting May 4th, 6:30-9 pm at the West Monitor Barn in Richmond, Vermont.

We are very interested in seeing how we can also try to keep the ball rolling here in Vermont.

Carl

The State of Maine now has a response to those towns that passed the ordinance. You can read it:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1221/images/Whitcomb_Letter_Local_Food_Ordinance.pdf

I can imagine the next move of the towns, or at least one possible next move, a la American Flatbread. The town itself could host a local community dinner featuring a slew of locally prepared, uninspected products (like maybe a pig roast from a communally butchered pig), broadly advertised as such, charge $10 a head for the meal, and invite the Dept. of Ag. officials to attend. The DoA would have a written invitation and couldn’t ignore it. They would have to threaten and/or fine someone, but who? The organizers? The producers? The whole town who attends and consumes knowingly? Who exactly would State Law be protecting in this case?

I’ve got the answer that’s been used by all the BIG corporate guys – ag included. SELF-MONITORING.

If it’s okay for other coprorate entities to monitor and self-report themselves (and save the govt cash) why not the small producer as well?

Also, how about this statement from the state of ME to Blue Hill –

“Department personnel are instructed to work with unlicensed food processors and manufacturers to gain their voluntary compliance with the law. However, persons who fail to comply will be subject to enforcement,….. including the imposition of fines.”

The threat of fines and enforcement doesn’t sound like “voluntary compliance” at all to me. That is coerced compliance.

Meat Producers Want ‘Sovereignty’ over Sales

2011-04-28 / People
By Josey Hastings

It may come as a surprise to some Vermonters to discover that they cannot, legally, buy pork or beef from the farmer up the road who has raised and slaughtered his or her animals on the farm.

As the local food movement grows in Vermont, both farmers and consumers are running up against many of these kinds of regulatory limitations.

In the case of meat sales, farmers are required to bring their live animals to a state-inspected slaughterhouse if they want to sell any of the meat to neighbors or friends, not to mention stores. While this is an acceptable arrangement for some farmers, others, such as Carl Russell of Earthwise Farm and Forest, feel strongly about slaughtering their own animals on the farm.

Russell’s farm is run by hand and horsepower, and he raises his animals with a sense of deep commitment and caring. In describing his relationship with his animals, Russell tells the story of finding a very cold, new-born Jersey bull in a rain-filled ditch in the early dawn. The calf’s mother had struggled in labor, sliding under a fenceline and down an embankment, to end on her back in the ditch where, unable to right herself, she dropped the calf in the cold flow of spring run-off.

Russell got both calf and mother back to the barn where the cow collapsed in exhaustion. He warmed, dried, and bottle-fed the new calf, which two seasons later he slaughtered to feed his family. This intimate level of connection with animals and with one’s own food is rather unique in today’s predominantly large-scale agricultural world, and it is this connection that Russell wishes to maintain by taking responsibility for slaughtering his own animals.

Russell sees the growing interest in local food as being, in part, about the yearning people feel to be involved in their food story—to know where their food comes from, how it was raised and by whom. He recognizes that, were it not for federal law, he could sell meat from his family’s farm directly to consumers who value the time, effort, and insight he invests in raising his animals.

Russell would like to see a tiered regulation system that would allow small farmers and consumers to benefit from direct sales. “As owners of our land and entrepreneurs in our community,” he says, “we feel we should be able to make business arrangements with our neighbors in a way that suits us.”

Randy Quenneville, Program Chief of the Vermont Meat Inspection Agency, has concerns that “there seems to be a general lack of understanding of sanitation principles and dressing procedures among small farmers.” The state agency works with small farming operations to help them understand USDA regulations and find ways to work within the bounds of federal law.

According to Quenneville, farmers are allowed to slaughter on-farm if they build a room that meets minimum sanitation requirements. At about $3 per square foot for new construction, however, the room requires a certain amount of initial investment.

Movement Grows
Russell’s desire for greater freedom in local, direct food sales is shared by many others who have begun to form what is now being called the “food sovereignty movement.” Russell believes this movement has developed a critical mass. “I don’t think that policymakers will be able to stem the tide of the food sovereignty movement,” he says, “People will buy the food they want, raised the way they want.”

Rural Vermont, a statewide nonprofit group founded by farmers in 1985, is currently planning a food sovereignty campaign which it intends to launch this summer. The campaign’s primary goal is to pass local food and community self-governance ordinances in towns throughout the state. One of Rural Vermont’s first steps will be to hold town meetings on the topic.

The ordinance is intended to protect the rights of consumers and farmers to engage in the direct sale of farm-raised and farm-processed goods without the oversight of state or federal government. This idea is not without precedent. Sedgwick, Maine residents recently made national headlines when they unanimously voted to adopt such an ordinance.

On Wednesday, May 4 from 6:30-9 p.m., Rural Vermont supporters from near and far will convene at the West Monitor Barn in Richmond for Rural Vermont’s 2011 Annual Meeting. Bob St. Peter, of Sedgwick, who is the executive director of Food for Maine’s Future, will give a keynote address on “Local Food, Local Rules: Creating Food and Farming Policies that Work for your Community.”

According to St. Peter, “Up until the last couple generations, we didn’t need a special license or new facility each time we wanted to sell something to our neighbors. Small farmers and producers have been getting squeezed out in the name of food safety, yet it’s the industrial food that is causing food borne illness, not us.”

The event is free for Rural Vermont members and all kids, and $10 for non-members.

If you are interested in participating in Rural Vermont’s food sovereignty campaign, contact Shelby Girard at or shelby@ruralvermont.org.

To read the full text of the ordinance, visit http://savingseeds.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/localfoodlocalrules-ordinance-template.pdf.

If you have information that you would like to share about local food or agriculture, please contact Josey at joseyhastings(at)gmail.com.