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12/28/2007

Peter Harvey found out the hard way.

The Calais resident and self-described "backyard farmer" had been thinking about raising pigs for some time before he and a neighbor took the plunge two years ago, buying three piglets.

When the pigs were ready, a custom slaughterer came to Harvey's farm to kill the animals, put the sides in plastic bags and took them to the New England Culinary Institute, a Montpelier-based cooking school, where students could sharpen their butchering skills.

"It was a good deal for everybody to have less expensive meat, and to have it raised right at home where we knew what (was going into it)," said Harvey.

But an inspector going through the Culinary Institute's kitchen spotted the pork and confiscated it, saying the pigs hadn't been slaughtered and processed according to government rules.

The experience helped turned Harvey into an activist for the idea that people should be able to raise meat locally for local consumption and that consumers should be able to buy it.

The farm advocacy group Rural Vermont agrees. Its director, Amy Schollenberger, said Rural Vermont would like to see Vermont adopt an interpretation of federal agriculture rules similar to Maine's, where people can buy a pig or part of a pig when it is still alive.

A key difference between the Vermont and Maine rules is that Vermont would require someone buying the pig to take it to a slaughterhouse, whereas Maine allows the farmer to make that trip.

Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais and Harvey's neighbor, said she plans to introduce legislation that would make it easier for farmers to raise animals and sell meat, and for consumers to buy meat locally.

"For me, a lot of this has to do with thinking about the food we eat and where it's been and how it's raised. I think the whole local food movement is a really important one," she said. "For people who do eat meat, a number of people want to know that the meat that they eat has been raised humanely and slaughtered humanely."

Growing food for local markets "fits in with the need for diversification in Vermont agriculture, the fact that we can no longer depend on dairy (for) the bulk of our agricultural business," she said.

Agency of Agriculture public information officer Kelly Loftus said officials there are open to a possible change in the rules. "Once we're more familiar with what is being proposed, we'll have a better idea of how we would like to move forward," Loftus said.

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