The 1907 Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) only applied to factory meat, not to farmers selling direct-to-consumers. While it was supposed to have been a response to the book The Jungle by Sinclair Lewis about the terrible conditions in slaughterhouses, current thinking suggests the bill was planned by the largest meatpackers to free them of smaller competition—by making it too expensive for the smaller guys to meet the new legal requirements. Yes, even back in 1907.

It wa only in 1967 that an amendment to the FMIA, termed the Wholesome Meat Act, forced farmers to stop selling direct to consumers. It required every piece of meat sold in the US to have undergone inspection by USDA inspectors in approved facilities (99% of US-grown beef), or to have been inspection by state inspectors (1%), so long as the state inspections were at least as rigorous as USDA inspections. (Not that USDA inspections are very rigorous, but USDA has to approve what the states are doing or it can shut the state-inspected facilities down.)

The one exception is if customers buy a live animal from a farmer—they can then process it themselves without an inspection, just like the farmer can process his own meat for his family without inspection.

Subsequent to passage of the 1967 Wholesome Meat Act, the US lost 2/3 of its slaughterhouses and 60% of its beef herds. Four companies came to control 85% of the beef processed in the US. All 4 have been accused of price-fixing, and the 3 largest settled with DOJ since last year, paying out huge fines.

Meat prices have risen much faster than inflation, and the big 4 meatpackers found it was cheaper to import beef than to purchase cattle raised in the US. Today, 17% of US-consumed beef is imported, and the US, which invented ranching and cowboys, is now a net importer of beef. Brazil has become the world’s largest beef producer.

On August 28 I spoke at Brownstone’s weekend at Polyface about my organization’s (Door to Freedom’s Save Our Food and Farms project) plan to work with multiple states to pass state legislation that would allow farmers to again sell their meat direct-to-consumers, for the first time in 60 years. Yes, this would challenge the FMIA’s 1967 Wholesome Meat amendment.

But think strategically:

• there is not enough US meat processing capacity;

• beef prices are sky-high;

• the US cattle herd is at a 75 year low;

• 142,000 farms were lost between 2017 and 2022, according to the USDA

• there were no reported food-borne illnesses reported to USDA from either on-farm slaughtered animals or those processed in small, so-called “custom” slaughterhouses, which are state licensed but do not meet USDA or state inspection requirements, from 2010-2022, per FOIA responses.

If multiple states move on this at the same time, alleviating meat shortages and improving the future for farmers, while providing competition to the industry and reducing prices—will USDA really try to shut this down? Especially when in-state agriculture is (constitutionally) a state authority?

I encouraged listeners at Polyface to consider working with us to accomplish this in their states, and I encourage you—my readers—to jump on this bandwagon with us and help us get legislation for limited on-farm slaughter and sale introduced and passed in your state. PLEASE Contact me if interested at merylnass@gmail.com

The very next day after my talk I came down with COVID, followed by a knee injury, which put me out of commission for a month, slowing the project’s rollout down—but we are back up and running now!!!

Almost simultaneous with my talk, on August 28, our President issued a tweet, out of the blue, strongly implying he was going to solve this very same problem on a national level. Rancher and physician Brooke Miller soon read the tweet to our Polyface audience, and I and others were very excited. Here’s the hopeful tweet:

But Tricky Donny pulled another fast one. Farmers already have the right to process their own food/animals. No one stopped them from doing that. They just can’t SELL the meat.

I thought The Donald was going to change that. But he didn’t. Instead, USDA promised some essentially minor and meaningless changes to their regs, which I have already discussed.

So why am I bringing this up again?

Because we have just one brave, swashbuckling member of the House who decided he would pick up the ball where Donny dropped it. And another Member, also an organic farmer, joined him. You know who: Thomas Massie and Chellie Pingry.

Watch for a new bill to drop late tomorrow that would accomplish what our organization is trying to do at the state level. State legislation will provide support for a federal bill, and vice versa. Now things are starting to look very interesting!

While I don’t expect this bill to pass in the lame duck session this year, it is a marker bill that will be reintroduced next session. As meat prices continue to rise, and with this year’s droughts, floods and Strait of Hormuz closure, this is absolutely the right bill for the right time. Help us to get so-sponsors and move this along to the finish line.

Stay tuned, and I am planning to discuss the bill, assuming it drops tomorrow, on my CHD-TV show Tuesday am, at 10:30 EDT.

Let’s start to turn this meat grinder we are all in, around.

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to Meryl’s CHAOS letter (Critical Health Analysis and OpinionS) as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More