Nancy Louth

Food insecurity is a sadly growing concern around the nation and NH is not immune. Yet we have hard-working local farmers and ranchers whose efforts allow restaurants, grocers and the general public to benefit from local sourcing and the fruits of our beautiful clean climate. This bill would aid both the farming producers and consumers by cutting through bureaucratic red tape of federal inspections (which adds significantly to everyone's costs). Currently NH faces a great shortage of certified USDA inspectors and processors. This shortage in combination with current statutes drives smaller customers away from supporting our local growers due to costs associated with having to purchase a whole or entire half of livestock to consume rather than individual cuts that are less cost- and space-prohibitive. Please support HB396 to allow farmers to sell individual cuts of meat without this USDA inspection when it has been raised and processed in NH. Thank you for your consideration.