Revived legislation seeks to end monopoly of meat industry,

open markets to small farmers amid coronavirus pandemic

By Hollie McKay | Fox News

Published 5 mins ago

"As the United States meat industry has been struck from all sides amid the coronavirus pandemic, a long-languishing bipartisan bill is gaining momentum as a possible solution to keeping small farmers afloat, feeding families, and halting the wasteful slaughter of countless numbers of cattle.

"What this legislation would do is expand the exemptions and make it easier (for small farmers) to sell to places like grocery stores and restaurants," Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) – who first introduced the legislation along with Chellie Pingree (D-ME) almost five years ago – told Fox News. "The same regulations that apply to multinational beef hackers that slaughter 10,000 animals a day shouldn't apply to a rancher slaughtering 20."

It's known as the PRIME Act, an acronym which means Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption, and is intended to "amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act to exempt from inspection the slaughter of animals and the preparation of carcasses conducted at a custom slaughter facility, and for other purposes." It ultimately seeks to "give individual states freedom to permit intrastate distribution of custom-slaughtered meat such as beef, pork, or lamb to consumers, restaurants, hotels, boarding houses, and grocery stores.""

https://www.foxnews.com/us/revived-legislation-seeks-to-end-monopoly-of-the-meat-industry-open-the-markets-to-small-farmers-amid-coronavirus-pandemic