Monica Nickelsburg
...Business is also booming, in part, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) opened up new sales channels for Iowa farmers who use the slaughterhouse. Iowa joined a federal program earlier this year allowing farmers and ranchers to sell animals slaughtered under the supervision of state inspectors across state lines, bypassing a logjam created by the limited number of USDA-inspected slaughterhouses. The program allows Story City’s customers who farm in western Iowa to sell their meat at the bustling Omaha farmers’ market just a few miles across the border, an example of the type of regionalized food economy that the program aims to promote. Iowa is one of eight states admitted to the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program and one of 27 authorized for state-inspected slaughterhouses. Both programs of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) were designed to address a narrowing bottleneck in meat processing. Meanwhile, state and federal lawmakers are pursuing new grants and other regulatory fixes to spur a revival of small slaughterhouses. Their efforts are timely as the pandemic has highlighted the shortcomings of a long and consolidated food chain and prompted more consumers to seek locally produced food. “I think the ideal model would be to adopt real, trustworthy inspection in the states, with local veterinarians, vet techs, and animal science grads providing inspection, allow trade among states, and let USDA, with their essentially non-inspection model, and emphasis on serving big multinational corporate interests, worry about imports and exports,” said Mike Callicrate, a Kansas-based cattle rancher and advocate for rural communities...MORE
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Can't help but notice how changing to a centralized federal program has contributed to industry consolidation.
The widespread consolidation in the meat industry—four firms control more than 80 percent of the beef processing market, for instance—and federal laws requiring large animals to be processed at a slaughterhouse under the supervision of a USDA inspector have left many small meat producers in a bind. There are approximately 800 federally inspected livestock slaughterhouses in the U.S. and about 1,900 state-inspected or custom facilities. That’s down from nearly 10,000 meat processing plants in 1967, when the law mandating USDA inspection was passed.
Also note the legislative proposals.
As the pandemic has shone new light on the failures of this system, U.S. representatives Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebraska) are aiming to encourage the development of more small- and medium-sized meat packing plants. In late September, they introduced the Strengthening Local Processing Act (SLPA) to do just that. When outbreaks of COVID-19 in large meatpacking plants led to temporary closures, it resulted in pork and beef shortages in stores and farmers having to euthanize their animals, Pingree says, “It became painfully clear that sometimes it’s better not to have everything consolidated.”...Currently, the USDA only allows custom slaughterhouses to process animals for personal consumption by their owner. If the agency were to begin allowing these facilities to be used for commercial sales, that would be a game-changer, she added. “Our members would be driving much [shorter] distances, which is better for their transportation costs. It’s better because it doesn’t stress out the animals, and usually farmers and producers feel that they have a stronger say in exactly how meat gets processed there.” Another bill first introduced in 2015 called the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act would also allow for that change. The bill’s sponsors re-introduced it this year as the pandemic underscored the problems created by a consolidated meatpacking industry.
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