83R8128 BPG-D
By: Rodriguez of Travis H.R. No. 710
R E S O L U T I O N
WHEREAS, Texans increasingly seek out locally sourced food
products, but the availability of local meat and poultry is limited
because small farms and ranches often lack access to small and
midsize production facilities; and
WHEREAS, Over the past two decades, the meat processing
industry in the United States has undergone massive consolidation,
with just four corporations slaughtering about 80 percent of the
cattle; facilities that process meat on this enormous scale are not
geared to accommodate local producers due to mismatches in size,
services, and business models; and
WHEREAS, Farmers and ranchers wishing to market meat and
poultry locally need small-scale, state-inspected slaughter
facilities, but this type of processing capacity is limited;
federal regulations create a barrier to the operation of such
facilities by requiring state inspection programs to enforce
regulations "at least equal" to those imposed at the national
level; current federal law regarding animal slaughter and meat
processing, however, is chiefly designed to ensure the safety of
corporate agribusiness, and regulations do not recognize the
differing practices applicable to small producers; forcing smaller
operations to use the same equipment as producers operating on a
vast scale creates an onerous and inappropriate financial burden;
and
WHEREAS, At present, despite consumer demand, the percentage
of direct sales of meat products is significantly lower than the
percentage of such sales of other agricultural products; the
one-size-fits-all approach of current federal law is hampering the
ability of small farmers and ranchers to sell directly to customers
and retailers, but by revising regulations to better reflect the
sharply different needs of corporate agriculture and small-scale
farming and ranching, the federal government can facilitate growth
in a sector of the agricultural economy that is primed for
expansion; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 83rd Texas
Legislature hereby respectfully urge the United States Congress to
amend existing laws and regulations governing animal slaughter and
meat processing to remove procedural requirements that are unsuited
to small and midsize slaughterhouse facilities, including basing
scientific substantiation and microbial testing on individual
product lines; to develop scale-appropriate approaches to the
regulation of small and midsize slaughterhouses that take into
consideration both the total volume and diversity of operations; to
provide for appropriate regulation of mobile slaughter and
processing units, including flexibility of the slaughter location
and scale-appropriate provisions for the disposal of offal and
wastewater; to allow feral hogs to be donated for food when
field-killed and custom-processed; and to expand the current
exemption for on-farm processing of poultry to allow for on-farm
processing of other animals at a similar scale; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the chief clerk forward official copies of
this resolution to the president of the United States, to the
president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
Representatives of the United States Congress, to the secretary of
the United States Department of Agriculture, and to all the members
of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that this
resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a
memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.