Commentary

Last night, just under 50 people gathered at Sovereignty Ranch for a Brownstone Supper Club. We shared a farm tour, a seven-course meal, cocktails, and a lively Q&A following a talk from Nate Sheets, who recently defeated Sid Miller in the Republican primary for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.

Of major concern in the room was water, and a lot was said about that, which I will write about in another article. But in a room full of ranchers, the conversation quickly turned to beef. Questions moved toward processing, bottlenecks, and the deeper issue of how farmers can survive in the current system.

Sheets returned again and again to a simple but powerful question: How do we make farmers price makers instead of price takers? It is the right question, and for many in the room, the assumed answer was more infrastructure. More USDA-inspected processing facilities, more capital investment, and more expansion of the current system.

But I raised my hand because I believe we are overlooking something much simpler. We do not necessarily need more infrastructure. In many cases, the infrastructure already exists.

Across Texas and much of the country, small-town custom slaughterhouses are common. These facilities are already inspected at the state level and are regularly used by families processing their own animals, by hunters bringing in deer, and by 4-H students completing livestock projects. They are not unsafe or unregulated; they are part of the fabric of rural communities, quietly serving people every day.

The contradiction becomes clear when you compare them to the grocery store. The meat counter at your local store is inspected by the local health department, yet these same types of locally inspected facilities cannot legally process meat for public sale if they fall under custom slaughter designation. Facilities that could use the business, and that already exist across rural America, are effectively sidelined by a rule that no longer reflects how people actually buy food.

Under current federal law, meat processed at custom facilities cannot be sold. It must go back to the individual who owned the animal prior to slaughter. This is why farmers rely on the workaround of selling a quarter, half, or whole animal before processing, so the buyer technically owns it. The system functions, but it does not function well, and it excludes most consumers. Someone living in an apartment who simply wants a few steaks is not going to purchase a quarter of a cow.

What we are left with is a system where the infrastructure exists, the demand exists, and the farmers exist, but the law prevents them from connecting in a straightforward way.

This is where the PRIME Act comes in. Championed for years by Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the bill offers a simple solution rooted in a basic principle: if meat does not cross state lines, it does not require federal oversight at the same level as interstate commerce.

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