We’re fortunate to live in a rural area (upstate NY USA) where many people are experimenting with localist farming: CSAs, direct sales of pasture-raised meat, and so on. Trying to support these operations has brought out my libertarian side – many of them struggle with regulations that may at one time have been aimed at promoting public health but which now seem mostly to work to the advantage of industrial farming.
Here’s an example with which we’re familiar. To sell packaged meat, a small farmer has to have his livestock butchered at a USDA approved slaughtering facility. There aren’t many of these around here, and farmers need to book slaughtering times up to a year in advance – that is, before they know anything about the coming year’s farming & economic conditions. Needless to say, they’re more expensive than local, unlicensed slaughterhouses that serve domestic (and, dare I guess, black market) needs.
Our son and his family raise sheep for wool and for meat, and have become familiar with an odd loophole in the regulations that, I think, highlights their absurdity. They can’t sell packaged sheep meat by the pound, but they can sell an entire sheep, then as a “favor” to the customer have it butchered and conveniently packaged at a local non-USDA slaughterhouse. Since not many people want to buy a whole sheep’s-worth of meat at one time, this of course limits sales considerably.
Who benefits from this? Certainly not small farmers.