11/7/2018 Earlier this year, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) published a guideline entitled, “FSIS Guideline for Determining Whether a Livestock Slaughter or Processing Firm is Exempt from the Inspection Requirements of the Federal Meat Inspection Act.”
In this document, USDA, FSIS updated their definition of “in commerce.” This new definition makes it legal for a County-Inspected retail market to sell packaged meat and poultry products to end consumers in locations other than their market, provided the products remain under their control.
This means one can produce and package meat and poultry products in a restaurant, retail meat market, shared use incubator kitchen or other County Inspected facility, carry the products to another location (such as a farmers market), and sell them directly to the consumers. Previously this activity required inspection from NCDA & CS Meat and Poultry Inspection Division or our federal counterparts, USDA, Food Safety and Inspection Service.
NCDA&CS Meat and Poultry Inspection Division has created the following notice (linked below) to educate persons about this new regulatory interpretation and the requirements for meeting this exemption. NC Department of Health and Human Services reviewed and contributed to this policy notice. They will be disseminating it to the local county health inspection personnel, whom they license.
http://www.ncagr.gov/meatpoultry/documents/2-18OffSiteRetailSales.pdf
Please share this information with interested parties, especially operators of shared use incubator kitchens. This new policy opens a lot of markets for their clients.
Thank you very much,
Beth
Dr. Beth Yongue
State Director
NCDA & CS Meat and Poultry Inspection Division
1001 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1001
(919) 707-3180 office
(919) 715-0246 fax
http://www.ncagr.gov/meatpoultry
E-mail correspondence to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties by an authorized state official.