Raising Pigs

[jen judkins]

I can’t help but think abouot spring when its so warm and with so little snow 😀

We raised organic pigs last year for our family freezer. It was quite a success and I enjoyed doing it. Looking forward to a new batch in April. Thanks to some help from Carl, I think we can handle the slaughtering at home this year. So here is the question….

I’ve had requests from friends and neighbors for meat (we’re talking large quantities (1/2 or whole pig) and I was thinking of doing a CSA style offering to a small group of people. But the Dept of Ag rules and regs require meat sold in NH to be USDA inspected. I read over the rules and regs today and its clear that pigs raised for my family are exempt but less clear that those outside the family would be. So do I have to send the pigs going outside the family to a USDA facility or is there a way to slaughter them at home. I have no plans to package meat in small portions and sell at say, a farmers market. Any experience with this?

My thought was that if I raised and slaughtered the pigs and made those participating take the meat to their butcher themselves…the meat would be technically theirs ‘raised for their own consumption’. Or am I looking for trouble:rolleyes:

[dominiquer60]

Jen,

I have been on a farm that would sell the pig to said out of family customer and the customer would also pay us what it cost to have the pig slaughtered and then butchered by a state inspected facility to the customers specifications. Perhaps a more “legal” way would be to be paid for the pig, then the customer also has to pay the butcher. In your case, I am not sure about the gray area of you cutting the pig and selling the pig, especially in your state.

I bought a pig from a friend and we killed and dressed in right there on the farm. I chose to bring it to my local butcher for cutting and smoking, but I could have stayed and helped my friends cut and wrap their pig and ours for free. Since money did not exchange pass the point of pig purchase I don’t feel on farm cutting and wrapping would have been wrong in this case. However I was not in a position to spend a whole day away from the farm, and I like vacuum packaging for long distance travel and long term storage. Another thing to consider is if I was to get sick from improperly handled pork, there is no chance that I would sue my friends if we had cut and wrapped ourselves. Be careful to choose customers of this sort wisely.

That’s my two cents,

Erika

[Lingodog13]

Jen,
I sell a few lambs direct to local folks here, and the way I stay legal is to sell them on the hoof, and then either help them butcher “their own animal” on our place, or put them in touch with another local guy who will do a custom and Inspected job for them. I won’t sell half, or butcher for them as that could lead to legal trouble eventually. Most of the people I sell to butcher on the spot and take the carcass home to cut and wrap.

[Ed Thayer]

Jen,

You must have them butchered by a USDA shop if YOU sell them from your farm. I barter pork from the Eccard farm by trading syrup for meat. There is no paper transaction as discussed earlier.

The NH State statutes are Bogus in my opinion but that is what the State has come to.

I want to raise a pig this spring and need your guidance for that.

Ed

[Carl Russell]

Jen, it is hard to believe but even though Kristen owned those pigs and she fed them and helped kill them, the fact that they were raised on my land made them my pigs and it was illegal to sell them to her that way.

Rest assured that you will not be alone. There are thousand of families that get their meat all over New England through these “illegal” means.

Even if you somehow could show that these people were part owners of the farm, there is some doubt that the statutes can be read to accept multiple owners of the same animal, as they are not “family or non-paying guests”.

In Vermont we have been working on getting statutes on the books that will allow for multiple owners having their animals slaughtered outdoors then taken to a custom facility. I don’t really know what NH is like, but all state meat inspection systems have to be equal to the Federal standards, and we have recently gotten some indication that it is only the current interpretation that is restrictive, and that in fact this age-old method of feeding communities is actually legal.

I have for years just leveled with my customers. I have people who want to buy my pork precisely because of how I raise and slaughter them. Unfortunately it is not they who is breaking the law, but me, but they are supportive of me, and understand how they are participating.

In 2010 we intend to sell pigs by the half and whole, with a deposit at the beginning of the season, representing partial ownership and payment for feed and care. We will slaughter on farm. We can sell them live for others to load and take away if they want, but this has never happened in twenty-five years. People who buy our pork WANT it killed by me where it lived.

For years I have flown under the radar, but this year we are considering organizing a mass civil disobedience, actually advertising as many illegal meat transactions as possible in an effort to force the interpretation change. This is in our capacity as board members for Rural Vermont.

And just to clarify, this whole statement was a bluff, full of fiction…. like I would really do this…. just an attempt to get peoples hackles up…. I would love to be brave enough to do it like this, but being so close to the issue as a board member for a farm advocacy group, I would never set such a bad example of purposefully breaking rules…….

Carl

[jac]

Jeez you guys have as much red tape as we do this side of the pond !!! Isnt it strange that its legal to sell cigarettes which contain about 100 known poisons but not to kill a pig and sell some of that wholesome meat to your neighbors ?!?! We had a situation over here where a small family run butcher in Wales had been selling a sausage in his shop for years, ancient family recipe passed down thru the years… He called them “Welsh Dragon Sausages” .. Inocent enuff ud think. But along comes the Trading Standards Officer and says he has to stop calling them by that name as.. you’ll love this:D.. they dont actually contain dragon meat !!!!! Meawhile on tv a major car maker runs an ad showing a car that does the full “Tranformer” routine and turns into an ice skating robot… more big guy getting away with stuff that a small guy cant.
John

[jen judkins]

@Carl Russell 15858 wrote:

Jen, it is hard to believe but even though Kristen owned those pigs and she fed them and helped kill them, the fact that they were raised on my land made them my pigs and it was illegal to sell them to her that way.
Carl

See I think that is subject to interpretation. If a person buys a pig and pays me to raise it, whose pig is it? They pay the feed bill then decide on how they want it butchered…sounds like ownership to me. Kind of similar to boarding a horse at a stable….just because the horse lives there, doesn’t mean the stable has ownership of the animal.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone. I’m still formulating my plan. I certainly want to play by the rules, but I think there is some wiggle room in the interpretation of the law and my clients may actually prefer to haul their pig over to a USDA facility, making it a moot point.

[Carl Russell]

After 24 hours of reflection, I want to clarify my earlier comments.

Last year we raised pigs in partnership with out neighbor, Jen’s sister. She actually paid directly for her piglets when we picked them up, by writing a check to the breeder. She then throughout the season, dropped off bags of feed, and restaurant kitchen waste, so there was no exchange of cash. In this manner she was raising her pigs on my land, so in a basic sense it was entirely legal. The problems arise when the animals are split, making it difficult to show that they are actually owned in partnership.

Carl

[Mark Cowdrey]

Jen,

My understanding of the applicable regulations is that uninspected meat cannot be legally sold in the State. However, in actual common practice, regardless of its “true” legality, I can “sell” you a portion of a live animal & then arrange to have it slaughtered, butchered & wrapped for you. This is sometimes referred to as “custom” slaughtering. In order to maintain the plausibility of such an arrangement, the portion of the animal has to be something reasonable size-wise, for example, a quarter. Eighths, sixteenths start to get kind of weird in a couple dimensions, believability being one.

If you have your work done by a federally inspected (USDA) facility, any cuts in any amounts can be sold. They will come to you labeled as inspected.

I found the link below which is interesting. Apparently we have an RSA in place for state inspection for intrastate sales of meat. I am virtually certain that this is not active & not currently available. So much for no broad base tax….

http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/RSA/html/XL/427/427-mrg.htm

I choose not to use the only federal slaughterhouse in NH. I have been trucking to Randolph Vt to The Royal Butcher for the last few years. I just picked up 2 pigs worth of pork there Tuesday. I had a large amount put into sausage as that is my market. Most of it was done in the wrong flavor. I am contemplating getting out of raising for others or going to pirate status. We will see.

Later:

I have not thoroughly read the RSA. I would be interested in others opinion. It seems to me that although it is not as ideal as a hands off approach by the authorities, it would allow more facilities to provide “legal” INTRAstate meat.

Mark

[Matthew]

This world is getting so screwed up. In my state you can leagaly take a dump on your lawn but it is illeagl to build a outhouse that does not sit on a approved septic system. I used to do a lot of tree work removing trees in peoples yards, leagly anyone can remove a tree with out a arborist license but to cut a branch on a tree that is not being removed you need to be licensed. I operated under the terms that the tree triming was free but I was charging for the clean up of the wood and brush. I wonder if you could give someone a pig for free killed and cut up but charge ex amount for the wraping to cover the total fee you intended to get for the pig. Our government is slowly turning the average person into a criminal one stupid law at a time. Thare was a movie called the Cowboy Way with Woody Haroldson at one point these two cowboys from New Mexico are in New York city and they spend the night camped out in Central Park, in the morning they are awoken by a mounted cop that gives them tickets for sleeping in the park. After the cop gives Woody Haroldson his ticket he askes them are you guys real cowboys? (This is the line I love) he responds ( NO WERE MOSTLY CRIMINALS WE DO ALL SORTS OF BLOOD THIRSTY SH#T LIKE SLEEPING IN PARKS.) Im not saying that commercial meat plants should’t be inspected but give the backyard farmer a break.

[jen judkins]

This is from one of my NOFA coleagues, Larry Savage. Nice coverage of the topic at least for NH…

“Regarding the USDA rules, if you sell individual cuts of meat to the public the meat must be slaughtered and inspected and packaged at a USDA approved facility with a USDA inspector on site. Packaging must have the following:

USDA inspection legend with plant #
Safe handling statement
Name and address of the USDA processor
Name of the cut contained in the package.

If a farmer wishes to have other information on the label, that label must be sent to Washington, DC for approval. Any claims made on the label must be backed up with appropriate records.

More information about USDA inspection and labeling can be found at the Food Safety and Inspection Service web site.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Home/index.asp

An exception to the USDA inspection rule is for animals that are owned by an individual who wishes to process the meat for their use in their own home. These animals may be processed on the site where the animal was raised or at any other site the animal’s owner wishes to process the animal. This could be USDA approved site or any other custom meat processor or right on the farm.

We have not done this but a farmer may choose to sell live animals instead of meat. The farmer can line up customers and sell shares (or whole) animals to them. But it must be clear that the bill of sale states that the customer is buying a live animal. At that point the customer(s) can process the animal anyway they want because they own it. It would be prudent for the farmer not to be involved in the processing in order to avoid running afoul of the USDA regulations. But some farmers choose to process the animal for the customer at the farm or offsite and charge an extra service charge. I would not be too sure about the safety of that from a legal perspective.

Since the original post was about pigs, pigs present a special problem. We have not found a USDA processor which is acceptable to us as a slaughter facility AND a smokehouse. Blood Farm’s smoking is not USDA inspected while the rest of the plant is. So hams and bacon smoked there cannot be sold to the public.

The best smokehouse I have ever tasted is Fox Country Smokehouse in Canterbury, NH.

http://oldehousesmokehouse.com/about.php

They are USDA inspected for their smoking but they are not a slaughterhouse. So when we do pigs for the Savage family , we use a custom slaughterer who cuts the carcass and delivers the hams and bacon to Fox Country for us. These smoked items cannot be sold to the public because the pig was not USDA inspected during slaughter.

For a commercial operation, we would have to use a USDA inspected slaughter facility to produce the hams, bellies, chops, ribs and shoulders. Fresh pork could be packaged in that plant for sale to the public with proper labeling. The cuts to be smoked would be transferred to the smoke house where they can be smoked under USDA inspection. But here’s the rub. Fox Country doesn’t cut and package the smoked meat unless it is for sale in their own store. We would have to transfer the smoked primal cuts back to a USDA butcher for packaging into sale-able packaging. Needless to say all this is too expensive to be economically feasible.

If we did add pork to our products, we would consider using the live animal sale exception and use a custom processor that slaughters, cuts, smokes and packages the pork. We do have a custom processor in Bennington, NH that might be suitable if I can get him to improve his curing recipe for me.

For those that use the slaughter house in Gofftown, maybe their smoking is inspected but I don’t know. There may also be options for pork processing in Vermont as Sugar Mt. Farm is building a USDA inspected processing facility.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

This is very intriguing to me as I just found out about it. I’ll be looking into whether it will be open to the public or not. Walter’s blog and website at Sugar Mt. Farm is a must read for those interested in pork processing.

This is probably more information than can be absorbed in one sitting but there it is.

Larry Savage
Green Ledge Farm
472 Poor Farm Rd.
Francestown, NH 03043

Certified Organic and 100% grass fed beef
http://www.greenledgefarm.com/”

[gwpoky]

Great discussion, you all need to read “Everything I want to do is Illegal” by Joel Salatin, this was one of my winter reads, very good. Keep selling and working to build these local, nongovernment messed with food systems we will all be better off. We are working of the raw milk issue here in WI none of the laws have anything to do with actual food safety and health facts, it is all about market access. Spring is coming, have a great day.

George

[Mark Cowdrey]

Larry,

I haven’t tried the Canterbury outfit but Green Mountain’s (of Windsor, VT) Maple Sugar cure is the best I have found. Ultimate combo of sweet & salt.

Mark

[bivol]

LOL don’t you slowly get the idea that all that surplus state regulation is making people stupid? (i apologize for the word)

i mean, if people are left to their own devices, they can train their creativity and not rost.
100 years ago farmers used to put lift the back end of their Ford T off the ground, hake off the tire off, strap a belt to the rim, and power their farm equipment. now it would probably be illegal. people nowdays are surely not lacking in intelligence when compareed to 100 years? what does that tell me? overprotective parenting seldom produces capable children. like so, overprotecting state will, i’m afraid, choke the general creativity in people…:(

after living in a semi-regulated society before, i must say all that hyperregulation in my case coming from EU(like driving a bicycle with a helmet and only in approved ways) is ridiculous; i mean, if i want to get myself killed by doing something risky, who can stop me as if i were a child?

[mitchmaine]

bivol, i don’t think anyone in the gov’t (i.e. insurance companies) cares if you kill yourself, they just don’t want to have to care for you (spend money) if you live through the event. we have to get rid of insurance companies. if you think this is a free country, try riding on the roof of the bus with your chicken.

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