04/14/2024
ACTION ALERT: The Farm Bill and changes to meat inspection
Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund is proposing two new bills to benefit small scale farmers.
The Prime Act will allow farmers to use licensed custom slaughterhouses and then sell the meat within their own state, either direct to consumers or to local restaurants and retailers. Now, custom slaughter is available to owners or part owners of a live animal. This would provide transparent, accountable meat sources to supply our local communities. he PRIME Act also helps small producers, including those who want to sell meat by the individual cut to consumers at local farmers markets and other outlets; the Act will enable them to use licensed slaughterhouses with more scale-appropriate regulation. This sort of tiered approach is what we need to build a resilient and diversified food system!
The LOCAL Foods Act - The second is the Livestock Owned by Communities to Advance Local (LOCAL) Foods Act. The LOCAL Foods Act allows individuals to buy a share of live animals and then hire someone as their agent to do the processing on-farm. The bill also reins in USDA’s abuses of state meat inspection programs, stopping USDA from harassing the states based on the agency’s informal policies or staff opinions.
These bills help local farmers and consumers at different scales. The LOCAL Foods Act helps the very smallest producers get their products to consumers who desire them, and it helps those consumers who want to buy meat in fairly large quantities at a time through animal shares, allowing them to do so without government oversight or regulation.
Please follow this link to support these bills by using the sample letter to send to your House Representatives. Here is a sample letter.
Below is a sample message to use for your call or email but please, to make the most
impact, create a personalized message that shares your story about why this
matters to you!
As a constituent, I urge Representative ____________ to support vital reforms to support
small-scale livestock producers in the Farm Bill:
1. The PRIME Act, H.R. 2814 allows small farmers to use custom-exempt
slaughterhouses to process their animals and then sell meat by the cut within
their state.
2. The LOCAL Foods Act of 2024, allows consumers to buy a share of a
live animal and then choose to have it slaughtered on-farm by a person of their
choice.
The Pandemic shone a spotlight on the severe problems with our consolidated meat industry. We need more small-scale farmers and independent processors, but one-size-fits-all USDA regulations stand in the way.
The PRIME Act uses custom slaughterhouses as the answer, which represent a smarter, scale-sensitive approach to regulation. They must meet federal and state standards, but without some of the aspects that are unduly expensive and burdensome for small-scale operations. A typical custom slaughterhouse processes fewer animals in an entire year than a typical large plant does in a single day. Custom slaughterhouses have shown that scale-sensitive regulations work well – the USDA has no records of any foodborne illness traced to any custom slaughterhouse since 2012.
Passing the PRIME Act would provide immediate relief for many farmers who at present must wait up to two years to get their animals processed at an inspected plant. And in the
long-term, it creates greater opportunities for new small-scale custom slaughterhouses to open, building the infrastructure we need for a more resilient, robust food system – without spending more tax dollars.
The LOCAL Foods Act addresses those farmers operating on an even smaller scale, working with local consumers who wish to buy shares of their live animals and have them processed on-farm. This extremely small-scale, transparent approach to local meat is happening in multiple states already, but is under threat by unreasonable USDA action. The bill continues to hold the states to the federal statutory and regulatory requirements, while simultaneously stopping USDA from harassing the states based on the agency’s informal policies or staff opinions.
Please support your constituents, consumers, and small farmers by including the
PRIME Act and the LOCAL Foods Act in the Farm Bill.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
