John Winn's growing market providing farm-raised lambs to Muslim families for halal slaughter, as well as to other Vermonters, will be capped by new regulations in a miscellaneous agriculture bill, H.515, that passed at the end of the legislative session.
(Halal is an Arabic word meaning “lawful” or “permissible.”)
The provisions were a response to a clash between the mostly careful traditional outdoor on-farm slaughter convenient for small livestock raisers who sell animals directly to the public and USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) standards that govern federal and state meat inspections.
Some use the term “black market” for the direct sale of animals that are not slaughtered to FSIS standards on the farm or not taken to a commercial slaughterhouse.
More light. That is at heart the reason the public records bill, H. 73, was passed this year, though it's not just “defrosting the windshield,” as State Archivist Gregory Sanford puts it, so that citizens can see “the wheels [of government] go round and round.” H. 73 revises and...