Rolling Back The Meat Monopoly

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One of the more important bills in the state Houses in this session is New Hampshire House Bill 396 (HB 396), legislation that would allow the sale of on-farm slaughtered meat by a pro­ducer from no more than three beef cows, five swine, ten sheep, ten goats, or a combination thereof per month. HB 396 passed out of the House on January 7; a hearing was held in the Senate Commerce Committee on February 10. The Senate passed an amended version of HB 396, then the House concurred and sent it on its way to Governor Kelly Ayotteʼs desk.

The latest version of the bill omitted the clause, “Any farm that slaughters and butch­ers its own beef cows, swine, sheep, or goats under this chapter with intent to sell the meat in intrastate commerce shall register with the Department of Agriculture, Markets and Food. A representative of the farm shall sign a state­ment in such registration acknowledging that by not processing its own beef cows, swine, sheep, or goats at a United States Department of Agri­culture facility the farm is violating federal law and could be subject to federal prosecution.”¹

USDA MONITORING

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is monitoring the progress of HB 396. The Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) prohibits the sale of uninspected on-farm slaughtered and custom-slaughtered meat in either interstate or intrastate commerce. In this context, “inspected” means a state or federal inspector is present when slaughtering and processing is taking place.

In a December 18, 2025 letter to New Hampshire Department of Agriculture Commis­sioner Shawn Jasper, as well as the clerk of the state House of Representatives, a USDA official confirmed the bill was a direct violation of the FMIA and encouraged the state to work with USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) in expanding its slaughterhouse capacity.² If the New Hampshire legislature decided to challenge the FMIA by passing the bill, few states would be in a better position to do so. If a bill like HB 396 passed in any state, FSIS would move to shut down the state meat inspection program, as well as any slaughterhouse with a grant of federal inspection. New Hampshire has no state meat inspection program and only four federally in­spected slaughterhouses. Is it possible that state livestock farmers would have access to USDA plants in neighboring Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine if there was a federal shutdown.

LITIGATION POSSIBILITIES

The late state representative Sue Wallis, the original sponsor of the Wyoming Food Freedom Act, considered legislation that would have both allowed for the sale of on-farm slaughtered meat and specific funding for the Wyoming Attorney General’s office to litigate with USDA over the matter. If New Hampsuire HB 396 is signed into law, the state could allocate funding for litiga­tion with the feds. Possible support in the way of an amicus brief could come from Wyoming, which has a law (Wy. Stat. 11–49–103)³ legal­izing the sale of both on-farm slaughtered and custom meat, contingent on there either being an act of Congress or a federal court decision in Wyoming’s district. Another possible amicus brief could come from South Dakota, which passed a law (House Bill 1064) earlier this year legalizing the sale of custom meat direct to the consumer under certain conditions contingent, again, on an act of Congress or a federal court decision in South Dakota’s district.⁴

Even if the New Hampshire legislature does not provide funding for litigation, there can still be a lawsuit from a livestock farmer against USDA over the department shutting down implementation of the law as long as the legislature didn’t subsequently amend or rescind HB 396. In 2016, the Maine legislature convened a special session to rescind a provision in its recently passed Maine Food Sovereignty Act that allowed the sale of on-farm slaughtered meat from producer direct to consumer in towns passing a food sovereignty ordinance. The resci­sion came after USDA threatened the state with the loss of its meat inspection program.

It’s not as though HB 396 is authorizing any activity that hasn’t been legal before. The original FMIA had a clause stating, “That the provisions of this act requiring inspection to be made by the Secretary of Agriculture shall not apply to animals slaughtered by any farmer on the farm and sold and transported as interstate and foreign commerce.”⁵ At the time when the 1967 Wholesome Meat Act (WMA) passed, there were seven states without a meat inspection program⁶ where the sale of on-farm slaughtered meat was likely still legal; New Hampshire was one of them.

WMA DISASTER

To say the WMA has been a disaster would be an understatement. The act was promoted as a consumer protection bill but has turned out to be an industry consolidation measure. The WMA preempted state regulation over intrastate meat commerce and increased the cost of compliance for slaughter plants, without any corresponding benefit for the public health. Thousands of slaughterhouses went out of busi­ness in the years after the WMA passed.

As early as 1971, a Small Business Admin­istration paper to the United States Senate Select Committee on Small Business reported on the disastrous effects of the WMA. The report was titled “The Effects of the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 upon Small Business—A Study of One Industry’s Economic Problems Resulting from Environmental-Consumer Legislation Prepared by the Small Business Administration.”⁷ The paper discusses the cost of compliance with requirements of the WMA (mainly the cost of facility upgrades) and the effects it could have on small-scale slaughterhouses and processing plants. It includes the following observations:

• “It could be argued that the Wholesome Meat Act was as much of a disaster for many small meat firms as a hurricane” (SBA, p. 32).
• “During the congressional deliberations in 1967 over the Wholesome Meat Act, there was little discussion of the effects that the Wholesome Meat Act would have upon those fifteen thousand or so firms that would now be subject to rigorous inspection of their product” (SBA, p. 31).

• “Nor was much attention paid to the poten­tial effects of the new law upon competi­tion within the meat industry. The meat industries are among the most competitive in the American economy. But the Whole­some Meat Act would lead to a significant diminution of competition. How many firms would have to shut down because they could no longer compete due to the new law? . . . . Would the Wholesome Meat Act lead, how­ever unwittingly, to an undesirable increase in concentration in the meat industry? Questions such as these were barely raised during the legislative process” (SBA, p. 31).

• “The SBA report notes that following pas­sage of the Wholesome Meat Act, legislation was introduced in Congress that would have allowed SBA disaster loans for slaughter­houses attempting to become compliant with the act if the slaughterhouse’s financial need could not be ʽmet by private financial institutions or by regular government credit programs.ʼ As recorded in the report, ʽthe SBA disaster fund is based upon the legal principle that the emergency is created by the act of the sovereign U.S. government which is beyond the control of the individual business. This may cause major losses to the businessman, particularly if the company is forced out of business. The sovereign act is thus equivalent to a natural disasterʼ” (SBA, p. 33).

 

According to the report, the Wholesome Meat Act only directly affected strictly intrastate producers whose production at the most was 20-25 percent of the total national products of meat. Of this intrastate group, slightly less than half were not in conformance with the Wholesome Meat Act and probably about one-third or so of the group not in conformance would go out of business if some form of federal loan program were not developed for their benefit (SBA, p. 86).

Much of what the paper questioned about the WMA has come to pass. In 1967 there were about nine thousand slaughterhouses in the U.S;⁸ as of January 2025, according to USDA’s Na­tional Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), that number has dropped to less than three thousand.⁹ The twelve largest federal slaughter plants for cattle accounted for 51 percent of the total killed in 2024; the fifteen largest slaughter plants for hogs accounted for 64 percent of the total that year. For calves, four plants accounted for 70 percent of the total and four plants that slaughtered sheep or lambs comprised 37 per­cent of the total.¹⁰ Whereas the SBA report men­tioned that strictly intrastate producers in 1967 were responsible for as much as 20-25 percent of national meat production, according to NASS in 2024, USDA plants slaughtered 98.2 percent of cattle, 97.1 percent of calves, 99.5 percent of hogs and 87.9 percent of sheep.¹¹ The WMA’s passage, more than any other development, has led to the creation of oligopolies in the meat industry; today, four companies control around 85 percent of beef processing in the U.S., and four companies control nearly 70 percent of pork processing.¹²

CON JOB

The proponents’ selling of the WMA when it was going through Congress amounted to a con job. A key to passing the act were federal surveys in 1962 and 1967 of state slaughter and processing facilities; in virtually every juris­diction, investigators found unsanitary meat, unsanitary packing and processing conditions, and a myriad of other problems, with the up­shot being conditions beneath the standard that would be required under the WMA. However, the newspaper, The National Observer, did its own investigation of the 1967 survey and reported the following:

• “Agents of the Federal Government fanned out across the nation last July under urgent and explicit instructions from Washington to gather examples of horrid conditions in meat-processing plants not under U.S. Government control.
• Swiftly and often with calculated decep­tion, the Federal men got what they were ordered to get. Their findings, which were widely accepted as factual and unbiased Government inspection reports, painted a picture of widespread filth in meat han­dling. These reports were later to be used as undisputed authority for scare stories that frightened the public and helped stampede Congress into passage of a new and tougher Federal meat-inspection law–the Whole­some Meat Act of 1967.
• What can now be confirmed is the nasty fact that the ʽevidenceʼ gathered in July was deliberately biased, that the tainted reports were used to mislead Congress and the public, that they put a lie in the mouth of President Johnson, duped a large number of well-meaning people, including Ralph Nader and Betty Furness and did a superb con job on much of the nation’s press.
• The stench of the filthy-meat survey began sweeping out belatedly early this year when state and industry officials challenged the authenticity of some of the inspectors’ findings. An investigation by The National Observer revealed that U.S. inspectors had indeed, fudged on some facts, and that other reports were doctored in Washington to make them sound even more damning than they were.”¹³

 

FOODBORNE ILLNESS

At the time when Congress was deliberat­ing over the WMA, there were few foodborne illness outbreaks attributed to the consumption of meat processed in non-federal plants. The same can’t be said about federal plants in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), between 2005 and 2020, nearly six thousand cases of foodborne illness were attributed to beef and pork consumption.¹⁴ The likelihood is that all, or nearly all, of that meat was slaughtered in large USDA facilities which process three hundred to four hundred cattle per hour and more than double that amount for pork.

By contrast, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Texas nonprofit, Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA), USDA acknowledged that between 2012 and 2020, there were no cases of illness attributed to the consumption of meat slaughtered and processed at a custom facility.¹⁵ Further, in response to a FOIA request, filed by the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), USDA indicated that for 2010-2022 it could find no cases of foodborne illness that could be attributed to the consumption of meat from on-farm slaughtered animals¹⁶; according to USDA, about ninety to ninety-five million pounds of meat are slaughtered and processed on the farm in a typical year.¹⁷ The much lower rates of production at custom facilities and on the farm are much more conducive to quality control, inspector or no inspector.

If the problems of acute illness due to mass-produced meat are troublesome, the problems of chronic illness due to mass-produced meat are arguably worse, even though they might be more difficult to trace. In a recent sign-on letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and Food and Nutrition Service (FSN), leaders of heavily pro-meat consumption organizations—such as the American Grassfed Association, the Weston A. Price Foundation, Farm Action, and the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance—recommended that USDA not increase meat consumption requirements for school nutrition programs until it undertakes a comprehensive review of sourcing, production and processing standards. The big meat packers dominate the supplying of animal protein to the school meal programs. The letter observed that the “major­ity of all animal proteins served in schools are sourced from industrial supply chains that rely on routine antibiotic use, growth-promoting drugs including ractopamine, and feed grown with significant pesticide inputs.”¹⁸ Carcinogenic additives in the cheap food served in schools are another problem; the letter’s signatories recom­mend that USDA “strengthen guardrails around processing standards, routine pharmaceutical use, and additive profiles so that quality evolves alongside any future policy shifts. For example, USDA should focus on leveraging its own com­modities procurement to encourage production systems that reduce routine pharmaceutical use, improve animal husbandry, and lower chemical input intensity, while expanding access to higher quality protein sources across diverse regional agricultural systems such as meat raised without hormones and routine antibiotics, grass-fed beef, and organic meat and dairy.”¹⁹

The letter concludes by warning, “Oth­erwise, USDA may unintentionally reinforce consolidation, reliance on highly processed animal products, and divert resources from higher priority goals like fresh and local food sourcing.”²⁰

For the proponents of healthy meat to real­ize those goals, there needs to be a significant improvement in local slaughterhouse infrastruc­ture. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has noted that chronic disease accounts for 90 percent of medical ex­penses in the U.S. Increased market access for healthy meat can reduce medical costs. Rolling back the WMA and allowing the sale of on-farm slaughtered and custom meat in intrastate com­merce is a way to make that happen.

THE PRIME ACT

Meeting the growing demand for locally produced meat by expanding slaughterhouse infrastructure for custom meat is the aim of the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption Act, federal legislation known as the PRIME Act, which has been under consid­eration in Congress since 2015, gaining more cosponsors with each session. The PRIME Act would give states the option of passing laws to allow the sale of custom-slaughtered/processed meat in intrastate commerce direct to the con­sumer and to venues such as restaurants, hotels and grocery stores. Currently, under federal law, meat from a custom facility can go only to the individual or individuals who own the animal at the time of slaughter; many potential customers either don’t have the funds to buy a whole animal or the space to freeze it.

Inclusion of a pilot program version of the PRIME Act in the current Farm Bill is a major step forward. Under the pilot program, the sale of meat to consumers from animals slaughtered and processed in up to ten custom facilities in each state opting to participate in the program would be legal. The pilot program would end on September 30, 2031;²¹ at that time, the ques­tion is whether Congress would codify sales of custom meat into permanent law in the next Farm Bill—there’s no guarantee that it would.

The PRIME Act’s lead sponsor, Thomas Massie, has been successful in this regard before; he was responsible for the inclusion in the 2014 Farm Bill of a pilot program on hemp that led to sales of hemp products becoming permanent law in the next Farm Bill.

In the meantime, the national herd is at its lowest levels in over seventy years, and the price of beef is skyrocketing. Beef is arguably the most important food nutritionally for a major­ity of the country. Up to five hundred custom slaughterhouses would be able to operate under the PRIME Act pilot program if every state opts to participate in the program²²; is that enough to address the shortages of high-quality meat in the market?

ROLLING BACK WMA?

Over the next five years, only the courts can roll back the WMA’s prohibition on sales of meat. When it comes to health, safety, food security, choice, fair markets and local resilience, the WMA is failing small-scale slaughterhouses, family farms, consumers and communities now more than ever. Federal pre­emption of intrastate meat sales needs to go.

Will New Hampshire be the state to com­mit to litigating over the WMA? The state has an argument that the Wholesome Meat Act has impaired its ability to protect the health and safety of its people under the Tenth Amendment police power with the contribution of central­ized meat production to chronic disease and the mass shutdown of livestock farms due to the anticompetitive effects of the WMA. How would a lawsuit impact federal funding for New Hampshire if HB 396 passed into law and FSIS shut down the federally inspected plants in the state? Are there any affected farmers who would file a lawsuit? A lot is potentially at stake for farmers and ranchers across the country.

What’s most at stake is the health of the American people. The people were sold a bill of goods nearly sixty years ago when the WMA passed into law. Legalizing intrastate sales of custom and on-farm slaughtered meat would be an integral part of Making America Healthy Again.

REFERENCES

1. HB 396 – New Hampshire House Bill 396 (2025), “relative to the processing of beef cows, swine, sheep, and goats at facilities not certified by the United States Department of Agriculture.” (7 January 2026, amended 3090h), clause 6, item V. https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billText.aspx?id=756&txtFormat=html&sy=2026
2. USDA-FSIS (2025, DECEMBER 18). Letter to Paul C. Smith (Clerk of the House) and Shawn N. Jasper (Commissioner, NH Ag Dept.).
3. Wyoming Food Freedom Act, Wyoming Statutes Section 11-49-103 (2025). https://law.justia.com/codes/wyoming/title-11/chapter-49/section-11-49-103/
4. HB 1064 – South Dakota House Bill 1064 (2026, 101st session), “An Act to provide for the sale of producer-raised meat and meat food products directly to consumers pending legalization under federal law.” (enrolled 26.279.13). (https://sdlegislature.gov/Session/Bill/26577/301932
5. Federal Meat Inspection Act, Section 91, acts Mar. 4, 1907, ch. 2907, 34 Stat. 1265. 59th Cong. (1907). https://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=34&page=1262#
6. Naughton, Dennis. (1970). The Wholesome Meat Act and Intrastate Meat Plants. Creigh­ton Law Review, vol. 4, 1970. pp. 90-91, footnote 30. [PDF] https://cdr.creighton.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/6fd3362b-5e16-4a35-aafa-59c14115094b/content
7. United States Small Business Administration (SBA) and United States Congress, Sen­ate Committee on Small Business. The Effects of the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 Upon Small Business: A Study of One Industry’s Economic Problems Resulting from Environmental-Consumer Legislation. U.S. Govt. Print. Off., Washington, 1971.
8. United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS). (1969, April). Livestock Slaughter 1968, p. 35, Table 20. https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/r207tp32d/4f16c698g/k930c1955/LiveSlau­Su-04-00-1969.pdf
9. United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS). (2025, April). Livestock Slaughter 2024 Summary, p. 62. https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/r207tp32d/k930dv029/1v53mt52h/lsan0425.pdf
10. Ibid, p. 6.
11. Ibid, p. 8.
12. Heffernan, W. & Hendrickson, M. (2007). Concentration of agricultural markets. University of Missouri, Department of Rural Sociology. Posted online at http://www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/07contable.pdf [View PDF – http://bit.ly/1JZuqGf]
13. Naughton, p.88, footnote 20 citing The National Observer (May 20, 1968, at 1, col. 2)
14. Stephenson, M.M., Coleman, M.E. & Azzolina, N.A. (2024). Trends in Burdens of Disease by Transmission Source (USA, 2005–2020) and Hazard Identification for Foods: Focus on Milkborne Disease. J Epidemiol Glob Health 14, 787–816. [See Table 2, p.809 – citing from CDC data] https://doi.org/10.1007/s44197-024-00216-6; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Microsoft Access® data set including all transmission sources (food, water, animal contact, environmental, person-to-person) for years 2005–2020. Provided to MEC by Hannah Lawinger, NORS Data Request Manager, on July 20, 2021.
15. USDA. (2020, June 25). [Foodborne illness from custom meat]. FOIA response, 2020-FSIS-00397-F. [PDF]
16. USDA. (2022, August 4). [Foodborne illness from on-farm slaughtered meat]. FOIA response, 2022-FSIS-00220-F. [PDF]
17. United States Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS). various Livestock Slaughter Summary reports, p. 7. https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/publication/livestock-slaughter-annual-summary
18. American Grassfed, Alliance for Natural Health, American Regeneration, et al. (2026, March 30). Letter to Brooke Rollins (U.S. Ag. Sec.). and Food and Nutrition Service Leaders. “Aligning School Meal Standards with the MAHA Mandate to Protect Chil­dren’s Health.” [PDF] https://unitedweeat.earth/sign-on-letters/aligning-school-meal-standards-with-the-maha-mandate-to-protect-childrens-health/
19. Ibid, p. 2
20. Ibid, p. 3
21. H.R. 7567 – Farm Bill 2025, House Resolution 7567, 114th Cong. (2016). Section 12114
22. Ibid.

 

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