Petition to Clarify the Personal Use Exemption of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA)

Dear Members of the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture and Appropriations Committees,

The undersigned urge you to support clarifying language to the Federal Meat Inspection Act’s personal-use-exemption to confirm state laws that are based on this federal exemption and allow livestock owners to have an agent slaughter their livestock on the farms where the livestock was raised and to access their meat without state or federal meat inspection. Currently, people who rely a part of their business on the personal use exemption, including farmers selling livestock for on-farm slaughter, itinerant slaughterers, and custom processors, are vulnerable when they base their decision on the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to uphold its standing 2018 guidance - given that guidance could be easily changed.

It is time to update outdated language in the FMIA to ensure that standing FSIS guidance is more clearly visible in the written law so that on the ground practitioners have planning security, instead of them continuing to be vulnerable subject to agency discretion.

In the long-standing practice of on-farm slaughter, people across the United States assume the risk of having animals they own slaughtered on the farms where the animals were raised regardless of whether the individuals owned the living animals for years, months, or days prior to slaughter.  This practice has not resulted in significant foodborne illness outbreaks nor the commercial sales of uninspected meat.  Today, 19 states rely on standing FSIS guidance and discretion for their on-farm slaughter practice, while 8 states (Arizona, Illinois, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Vermont) have their own on-farm slaughter laws that allow new owners to have their livestock slaughtered on the farm where it was raised. In other words, the majority of states already allow for on-farm slaughter. All of them would benefit from more clarity in the law and guidance by modernizing outdated language in the FMIA.

With the pandemic and current inflation rates,  more and more people are seeking affordable access to locally raised meat,  including raising livestock themselves or buying shares of live animals. The increased demand for local meat is exacerbating pre-existing processing bottlenecks, making the protection of the personal-use exemption even more vital.  USDA-inspected and custom livestock slaughterhouses are unable to meet the needs of current producers and consumers, let alone future producers. This disproportionately affects small farms, independently owned farms, farms in particular geographical locations, and farms raising small ruminants and hogs, because they face the greatest hurdles in accessing slaughterhouse capacity.  This in turns hurts consumers who rely upon such farms based upon their particular geographic location, cultural needs (eg. Halal slaughter), or socioeconomic status.

When the personal exemption was first drafted, a large percentage of Americans raised their own livestock.  While that is less true today, and fewer people are actively engaged in farming, more and more people today are concerned about the economic stability of our food system and sufficient access to food for their families. People already have the legal right to “personal-use” of the livestock they own, whether they live on a farm and have raised them themselves or not.  This is the law because of standing FSIS guidance (2018) that bases the personal use exemption on ownership. The bundle of rights associated with ownership under common law include the ability to use agents and the ability to assume risks.  The goal of this amendment is to clarify the outdated FMIA language that bases the personal use exemption on who raised the animals, by replacing it with language in alignment with the standing FSIS guidance that is grounded on ownership and common law principles.

This amendment proposal also includes language to protect a State’s “equal to” status. Once a State administration has certified that its laws and standards align with the FMIA, the burden of proof to suggest the contrary would shift to the USDA.  The USDA would have to provide evidence and written reasons accounting for any accusations leveled at States in relationship to conflicts with their “equal to” status.  Under the current law, States bear the burden of proof in their own defense, and the mere threat of USDA withdrawal of this designation, sometimes based on informal policies or an individual official’s opinions, can place state officials in an untenable position of having to either abandon state policy or risk losing approval of the state inspection program. 

The proposed amendment thus aims to clarify the law to match standing FSIS guidance that allows livestock owners to access meat from their livestock for personal use. This would not substantially change federal law or pre-empt state law.  Rather, it would signal that people's ability to work with their local legislators, farmers, and slaughterers to create scale-appropriate solutions that ensure their food supply and a viable, accessible, local food economy at the state level is honored and encouraged federally as vital to our democracy, food security and resiliency. 

Respectfully,

Rural Vermont

National Family Farm Coalition

Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund


Sign in to Google to save your progress. Learn more
Who are you signing on as? Check all that apply.
If you chose "Other" in previous question, please provide more detail:
Your Name *
Name of Farm, Business or Organization (if applicable)
Title (if applicable)
Email *
Mailing Address:

Street Address
City/Town
State *
Zip Code
Do you want to receive updates and action opportunities related to this campaign?
Clear selection
Comments (Optional)
Do we have your permission to use your comments above in our compiled testimonials?
Clear selection
Submit
Clear form
Never submit passwords through Google Forms.
This form was created inside of Rural Vermont.

Does this form look suspicious? Report