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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] OT - how to divide a pig among buyers

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] OT - how to divide a pig among buyers
  • Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:33:24 -0500


On Dec 16, 2013, at 10:49 PM, Carla Maness wrote:

We don't raise livestock, but the vendors at our market who do, butcher and sell by the piece.  A roast, or a steak, or whatever. We have beef, buffalo, and lamb available and they all do it that way. Would that be easier than trying to divide a pig 8 ways and have 8 different ways it should be processed? Will your processor even do that?  I'm just curious. Processors around here won't. You butcher a cow, pig or whatever, and they will do halves differently but that's about it.

Carla

I'm not Beth; but it's my understanding that the technicalities of the law in New York State mean that selling individual cuts is in a different category than selling a share of the entire animal; it requires different licensing, and the use of a slaughterhouse certified by the USDA, not only by the state. Theoretically, you're selling a share in a live animal, and arranging to get it to the butcher as a courtesy to the customer; the customer then deals with the butcher from there. Beth may prefer to use a state-only certified slaughterhouse, or she may not want to go through the additional hoops needed to allow her farm to sell individual cuts.

I don't know anybody selling eighths; but I have run into people selling mixed quarters of beef -- each purchaser gets some from the front quarter and some from the hind quarter, though I don't know just how the allocation is done. The purchaser still has to call the butcher and discuss how the meat is to be cut, IME.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 6A now I think
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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