Official Summaries

Livestock Owned by Communities to Advance Local Foods Act of 2025 or the LOCAL Foods Act of 2025

This bill provides statutory authority for expanding the personal use exemption from inspection requirements for livestock that are slaughtered and prepared by the owner or at custom animal slaughter facilities for meat products intended for personal consumption.

Under current law, the personal use exemption from certain Food Safety and Inspection Service meat inspection requirements applies to a person who raises an animal and slaughters the animal exclusively for personal, household, guest, or employee uses.

The bill applies the exemption to any person who meets these requirements and is the owner of an animal, in whole or in part. This allows for an animal to have multiple owners (e.g., a community or a group of people buying shares in livestock).

Further, the owner may designate an agent to assist in the slaughter, preparation, or transportation of the carcasses (or parts thereof) or meat and meat food products. If the owner designates an agent, the owner must maintain custody and specific identification of the carcasses or meat.

Current Full Text

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1212 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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119th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1212

 To amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act to exempt certain owners of 
    livestock from inspection requirements, and for other purposes.


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                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             March 31, 2025

   Mr. Welch (for himself, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Sanders) introduced the 
 following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on 
                  Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act to exempt certain owners of 
    livestock from inspection requirements, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Livestock Owned by Communities to 
Advance Local Foods Act of 2025'' or the ``LOCAL Foods Act of 2025''.

SEC. 2. EXEMPTIONS FROM INSPECTION.

    Section 23(a) of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. 623(a)) 
is amended by striking ``the slaughtering by any person of animals of 
his own raising, and the preparation by him and transportation in 
commerce of the carcasses, parts thereof, meat and meat food products 
of such animals exclusively for use by him and members of his household 
and his nonpaying guests and employees'' and inserting ``the 
slaughtering of animals by any person that is an owner of the animals 
in whole or in part, or the preparation or transportation in commerce 
of the carcasses or parts thereof or meat and meat food products from 
those animals by an owner, if such slaughter, preparation, or 
transportation is exclusively for the use of an owner or the household, 
nonpaying guests, or employees of an owner, subject to the condition 
that if an owner designates an agent to assist in such slaughter, 
preparation, or transportation, the owner shall maintain custody and 
specific identification of the carcasses or parts thereof or meat and 
meat food products, as determined by the Secretary''.
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