Laws on selling poultry meat for pets/captive carnivorous animals?

[pkarkos]

Hello All,

Not sure if this would go better in the local chicken laws and ordinances forum, but as it is about selling birds for meat, I was thinking you all might know more.
So I am starting a quail breeding independent study on my college farm. We are planning on selling eggs and as the farm already sells eggs, we should not have any legal trouble with that. But as we will be breeding our own birds, we will end up with males that we are not going to breed. We thought to sell these birds for meat. But we are in Massachusetts and to sell poultry meat it has to be processed in a USDA approved processing facility. We do not have USDA approved processing facility so we would have to bring them to someone else to process them. This, unfortunately, is very expensive and would probably not be worth it for the small number of birds. However, we thought about selling the birds for pet food or to falconers. Does anyone know the laws on how poultry needs to be processed for non-human consumption?
I did find something from the FDA from 2004 (attached to this post) that says any poultry that is sold as meat has to be processed at a USDA approved facility no matter what it is intended for. As this is from 2004, I was wondering if anyone knew of anything more recent?
If this does still hold up, we will probably just have to sell live males instead of processed ones. Either way will probably work but I wanted to be sure of all the regulations before we present our proposal to our farm.

Thanks so much!

 

[FortCluck]

@R2elk is good with laws and such

 

[RoosterML]

This may not apply to MA but in CT I believe if your are dealing in small numbers of poultry (under 1000) you do not need to process in a USDA facility. I may very well be wrong as I am going off a conversation and some brief research I did about a year ago.
I hope someone else can help you.
I would call around, maybe start with your local health inspector.
Good luck!

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Skip the federal and talk directly with your state Ag. Dept. Food division. Each state has the right to add to the federal regulations, every state can and usually has slightly different regulations.

 

[mandelyn]

Contact your state AG to check the specifics for small quantities. In Ohio we can raise up/sell up to 999, so long as they are picked up from the farm. We can't take them to market or sell to a store/off site but they can be purchased off the farm directly.

 

[Acre4Me]

State ag department - go to the source. However, a quail farm I’ve dealt with sells their excess males (live) to people who will butcher them themselves and they also post on groups for people who give their dogs a live or raw diet (or some such term).

 

[Ratchnick]

If You sell live look for bird dog clubs, they can use them for training and such. (Not dog food)

 

[pkarkos]

Thanks everyone! I will contact the department of ag and I'll post the results here in case anyone is curious.

 

[pkarkos]

So I emailed the Massachusetts department of ag and they were very helpful and prompt. Unfortunately, it does seem that if you are going to sell poultry meat for any purpose it has to be processed in a USDA facility.

 

[Acre4Me]

So I emailed the Massachusetts department of ag and they were very helpful and prompt. Unfortunately, it does seem that if you are going to sell poultry meat for any purpose it has to be processed in a USDA facility.

At least you have a definitive answer! Sounds like selling the still live birds is the best option.