New Wyoming Law Lets Local Ranchers Sell Cuts of Meat Directly to Consumers

Wyoming's groundbreaking Food Freedom Act has served as a national model for how states can deregulate many in-state food sales. The five-year-old law opened up many previously illegal food transactions in Wyoming, and has delivered on its promise to benefit ranchers, other food entrepreneurs, and consumers alike. And it's done so without a single case of foodborne illness being tied to any foods sold under the law.

The law also keeps getting better. As I detailed a column just last month, an amendment to the Act will allow low-risk foods such as homemade jams to be sold in grocery stores and sold and consumed in restaurants.

That was great news. But yet another new amendment to the law, passed last month and set to take effect in July, could further bolster the fortunes of ranchers and consumers in the state.

A new animal share amendment will let consumers buy individual cuts of meat directly from ranchers though an animal-share agreement, completely outside of the typical U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection regime. That's something that's still illegal in the other 49 states. It's also why the Wyoming law could be a game changer for ranchers in the state and—should other states follow suit—a valuable new revenue stream for farmers and ranchers across the country.

The new amendment was introduced by Wyoming State Rep. Tyler Lindholm (R), who co-sponsored the bipartisan Food Freedom Act five years ago.

"The idea for the bill is simple," Lindholm—a rancher with whom I serve on the board of the nonprofit Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund—told me this week. "Let ranchers and farmers sell herd shares for their animals. That way the entire herd is 'owned' by all of the customers before slaughter, thereby meeting the exemption standards of the federal law, and now the rancher does not have to jump through the hoops of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and can utilize the smaller mom and pop butchers that still [exist] in most of our small towns."

https://reason.com/2020/04/04/novel-new-wyoming-law-lets-local-ranchers-sell-cuts-of-meat-directly-to-consumers/