You do not need to be USDA inspected but do need to be inspected, by your state.” “The rationale behind the exemptions is that they don’t want to put all these little guys out of business. The USDA just doesn’t have the manpower to go out to a place doing 200 chickens,” Hermonot said. “The big guys are huge - Tyson, Purdue, Butterball - producing millions of birds. Hermonot said the USDA exemptions exist for efficiency reasons. We process our turkeys in our facility and sell them from our store right from the farm.” It really helped out our business tremendously.

Before it was enacted, Ekonk Hill did only custom processing.Įkonk Hill owner Rick Hermonot said, “It was a big deal. They could raise and process animals continually, not just when one customer at a time said ‘that’s the one I want,’” Hurlburt said.Įkonk Hill Turkey Farm in Sterling was one of the facilities that benefited from that legal change affecting poultry. It made a big difference to the industry. “This is something the legislature did a decade or so ago for Connecticut-grown poultry, chickens and turkeys. Each farm would be subject to inspection not by the USDA but by state agricultural authorities. The bills, if passed, would let farmers process no more than 1,000 rabbits a year on their own farms, not just on demand but pre-sale, saving them facility money and letting them scale up their production. “We had more demand than we could meet, but it’s such an inefficient system,” he said.

They could have sold more with a more streamlined process. Weinstock estimated that in any given year when they were custom-selling rabbits, they would sell from 100 to a few hundred a year. If you’re doing it in massive batches, it makes sense, but we are a small farm.” We were already selling at $10 a pound,” Larese said. By the time you add in these inspection fees out of pocket, that adds $20 a pound just for slaughter and inspection. “If you can find a USDA poultry plant that will do it, you have to pay to get the animals under inspection. Larese and Weinstock are familiar with this dilemma. Farmers can’t get the product to market in a way that can be supported,” he said. If you don’t have a lot of animals, it’s cost-prohibitive. “A USDA-certified processing center costs hundreds of dollars an hour. Hurlburt said both methods are problematic.

Highland park market meat special