Small Farm Exemption:
Small farms with under 10 million dollars annual revenue should be permited to certify their meat, value added products and raw milk for resale. (Without the USDA’s cost prohibitive levels of insanity. )
When freed from the regulations, made in consort with the factory farming industry, small farms would be given the freedom of choice to select equipment that suits their needs and budget to supply a safe and quality product to the consumer.
It is not rocket science to cleanly process meat, nor does it require extensive facilities or equipment.
The USDA has created regulations for meat and food inspections that have made small scale and localized production of meat and food almost impossible. My small scale farm is located in South Central Alaska. It is a 3 hour drive to the USDA approved meat plant that will permanently close it’s doors this month. It will now be a 6 hour drive to the next closest. As someone who is striving to provide ethically raised, harvested and local meat this is antithetical to everyrhing I stand for. The process to begin processing locally is nearly one million dollars and myself and many local farmers are at our wits end. We don’t produce enough to start a full scale plant because we cannot grow ourselves to that level. We have to sell on the hoof animals at deep discount and cannot build our businesses.