Can you sell butchered meat birds?

[daniel-delarosa]

There is a lady here in town that sells butchered rabbits for 8 bucks each. I was wondering if a person could sell chickens like that too since there is a 25 order minimum from most places. I dont mind cleaning 25 at one time, but I dont have that much freezer room.

 

[tonini3059]

It depends on your state. In PA I can sell 2000 units of poultry to the end user without having to be inspected. This means, 2000 chickens, or 500 turkeys, something like that, I forget how much a unit is. Also no selling to resturants etc, it has to be directly to the person going to cook it. Oh, also, it has to be off the farm sales, no farmers markets. Contact your extension office if you want to know for sure. But if you are selling just a copule of birds to friends and family it should not be a big deal.

 

[daniel-delarosa]

forgot to mention that I live In Oklahoma. I also live in city limits if that matters, but I am allowed to have chickens.

 

[PotterWatch]

Like tonini said, it depends on your state. The federal government considers people exempt from inspection for several different reasons but states can be more strict about their requirements. Here in California, they follow the federal regulations. With the exemption we fall under, we can sell up to 20,000 birds a year and are allowed to sell to pretty much anyone we want, restaurants, butchers, farmers markets, etc. Check out the federal regulations first and then go down the ladder from there to state and then county regulations.

This is a link to the federal guidelines:
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/oppde/rdad/fsisnotices/poultry_slaughter_exemption_0406.pdf