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okay hi everyone um thank you for joining us for our beef brunch educational series this month my name is ashley edwards and i'm an assistant extension agent and coordinator for animal science programs in the lsu ag center i do want to apologize for our technical difficulties that we had when we were trying to have this as a live event but with us today we're really excited to have mr brian miller he's the assistant director for the louisiana department of ag and forestry state meat and poultry inspection program and he's going to be visiting with us on some different marketing avenues for beef in louisiana so i know this has been a been a hot topic for a while and i think it's grown a little bit this past year with everything going on with covid and we saw definitely an influx or an increase in the amount of beef being processed here locally within the state so with that brian thank you for taking the time to be with us today you should be able to begin whenever you're ready all right thank you dr edwards um as you said my name is brian miller uh assistant director of the state's meet and poultry inspection program and uh basically what we do uh we staff meat and poultry processing slaughter facilities all around the state and uh and regulate product that's moving in commerce what we do in the inspection facilities is our inspectors go in and oversee operations we consider ourselves the eyes and the ears of the public we go into places generally the public isn't allowed to go usually because a lot of these places don't have retail markets so what we do is maintain the standards that the general public expects to see and so that these places produce a wholesome safe product that's properly labeled so it's half food safety half consumer protection and you know generally we have a very good working relationship with those facilities and you know we all have the same goal in mind that's uh to produce a safe product so uh as far as this presentation goes specifically what i would like to do is share with y'all how to uh take any animals that you're raising and actually bring them to market legally uh so as you see we have steps to selling beef in louisiana this is as of the the current time what our standards are we as a state program are partially funded and have cooperative agreements with usda so we function as the state version of usda with this but what that means is that we also follow usda policies and regulations we've adopted those regulations as our own we just might implement them a little bit differently we have some different policies generally what we like to do is focus a lot more on outreach and helping small businesses get started that sort of thing but still enforcing the regulations that are in place so as part of that outreach effort um we like to do things like this and just help out the community answer a lot of questions and uh i i personally enjoy cutting through a lot of the red tape and trying to simplify what is a very complicated process so if i can do anything as far as answering specific questions for any of you i would like to do that uh so you can let me know i will have my contact information at the end of this but you know if any y'all don't make it to the end uh my number is it's the 225-922-1358 for our office or you can email me at b m i l l e r that's b miller at ldaf.la.gov and that's ldaf as in louisiana department of agriculture and forestry so we'll go ahead and get started here so where do we start well we start with the basics here what we're going to look at is where generally people who are looking to sell beef where you get started and you've got to figure out a few things before you jump into it and the the best way when you're getting started is to start off with learning the industry some people uh i know that i that i speak to have a very thorough understanding of the industry some of them don't but it's really tough to get going if you don't know the marketplace so some of these items just generally speaking uh we recommend to people is check with their trade organizations whether it be american association of meat processors or cattlemen's association extension services academia government organizations business associates they might have private consultants um anything like that where you can gather some information would be very helpful i know uh like this will be at some point youtube is an excellent resource as well so we always encourage people to get a good understanding form that baseline understanding of the industry uh before they get into it but after that is when we come in and we can really help so determining your path one thing you need to know is what you'd like to do and who your regulatory agency is going to be when you do that are you exempt or if you do fall under a regulatory agency what do you need to do i get lots of questions on you know what kind of permits i need to get started what type of inspection that sort of thing well hopefully this this presentation will help you figure that out so we've got some key questions here that i like to ask people uh before we get started so starting with the first one are you the processor or uh a producer slash private labeler so the processor being the person the actual butcher is cutting the meat are you looking to open a facility are you looking to bring your live animals to another facility to have them processed that's going to determine a lot on the type of guidance that we give you also what species we'll get into what species fall under usda's federal meat inspection act and which ones do not that's going to be key in determining the regulatory agency as well who's your intended customer there's a big difference between selling to the end consumer or selling to another business for them to resell it what percentage is meat and poultry usually if there's a very small amount of meat and poultry in the item it won't fall under the same regulations so we need to figure that out are you selling the meat itself are you selling the service meaning that um if it's your animal and you're just paying somebody else to have it slaughtered and processed and you're getting the animal back that's a little bit different there's an exemption for that are they in state or out of state that'll also determine if you're dealing with a federal regulatory agency or if you're dealing with us with the state do you fall under an exemption talk about that and what about your label so we'll go through each of those things like i said it's a lot of information just remember that we're making this and i'm providing this presentation to serve as a reference document so it is going to be a lot of information it's going to be a lot of text but it's going to be the kind of text you can go back and review later and if any of you uh would like the original source documents or this presentation itself i'd be happy to send it out to anyone okay so getting started here with the regulatory agencies i just want to show you first at the bottom we have usda we have ldaf fda and our local dhh department of health so um we're splitting these up right at the beginning an important thing is what species is it this particular group we're focusing on beef so it'd be in the left hand category species that do require inspection uh they're considered amenable it's a word you'll hear a lot but that just means that they require inspection beef being a traditional livestock species along with swan goat sheep and you'll see equine on there but currently equine is not funded so it's not necessarily illegal it's just usda doesn't fund any equine inspection so it's not currently ongoing in the u.s um other species we hear about a lot farm-raised deer generally access deer that's slaughtered rabbit uh occasionally some bison and you know various other uh non-livestock non-traditional farm species of poultry also but you see at the bottom no white-tailed deer may be sold in louisiana that's a wildlife and fisheries regulation and it uh so any deer you see on the the shelf is generally either axis or uh maybe red stag something like that so uh the key here is for beef we're gonna be on the left side with inspection so it will fall under either usda or ldaf usda be in federal meat inspection and we're state meat inspection who is it being sold to so again on the left wholesale inspection versus retail permitted usually we say you get a grant of inspection or full inspection or the left two agencies and to have a permitted facility or retail falls under fda or the department of health uh nine times out of ten for those guys going to be department of health and we'll talk about them a little bit later so uh our specific programs under usda the federal meat inspection you'll hear about fsis a lot of documents regular regulations policies things like that you'll find on the internet are fsis titled and just that's just synonymous with usda and for state see us uh our meat and poultry inspection program and our compliance program and you can see the difference there and the inspection logos themselves with usda logos being around and ours being more of a stop on shape so all right what percentage is it usually this doesn't come into a question unless it's something that just has uh you know an added ingredient to it say if a good example would be uh the amount of sausage in a gumbo or say bacon bits on a potato things like that where it's just a very small amount if it's less than three percent raw or two percent cooked meat it does not fall under usda's regulations therefore it doesn't fall under our regulation and anything that doesn't fall under usda's defaults to your local health department so that's a a good thing to remember when we go with any of these things if it's not amenable then it falls to the local health department all right so this looks complicated i understand that it's actually two different decision trees here i've combined them just because uh we plan on sharing all of these with you but as you can see the one on the left being red meat slaughter and the one on the right being processing i made these just to try and make it a little bit easier for specific situations um so maybe you have an idea of what you want to do how you want to bring your animals to market this might help you in deciding which agency to go with you can follow it down either the farmer line or the consumer line with consumer the reason is going down there we'll talk about a little bit more but it leads to custom exempt we'll get in depth with that later and as you see the left-hand side over here a little more complicated because it is inspection you're dealing with state versus federal in-state versus out-of-state uh whether or not it's actually being retailed questions like that but if you follow these down and you have a good idea of how you want to sell your product this should lead you to the agency um that you're looking for on the processing side over here it as always gets a little more complicated but as you see these lead down to all four agencies or this custom exempt here state inspection federal inspection splitting in half leading down to these here i don't have fda on here because generally fda products are usually uh you know seafood or exported products but they are generally considered amongst the four and the department of health tends to be an extension of the federal uh health department so let's see personal use exemption so uh we'll cover a couple exemptions here this being i guess the most obvious personal use if you want to take your own animal and you slaughter it you process it for your own consumption members of your household non-paying guests it doesn't fall under the federal meat and poultry inspection act okay that is exempted and it is based on non-cfr 303.1 cfr meaning code of federal regulations that is a federal regulation that lists out all products that are exempted from the federal meat inspection act if you want to see the actual wording of this in writing but yes if it's all done by you for you it is exempt the next one is more complicated but also what most of you i imagine would be interested in uh custom processing this would be where it's your own animal that you are bringing to a custom exempt slaughter processing facility they could be custom for slaughter they could be custom processing typically they're both but not always so that might be something that you would want to find out um whether they are custom inspected and sli i mean processing and slaughter or if they're inspected processing and slaughter you'd want to see exactly what that facility has been approved to do to make sure that they can meet your needs so again this is listed in that 9 cfr 303.1 regulation uh but basically it is your animal and you want to use their butcher service but you're getting your animal back and it's for your own consumption or your household or non-paying guests very important these products are marked not for sale they cannot be sold there's no commerce that's going on here except for one thing you have to remember that this is based on this this exemption starts when the actual animal is delivered to the slaughterhouse so uh let's see we will get into direct marketing here in just a second where uh where you can use this exemption to your advantage if you are trying to sell your animals from your farm to other people you can sell the live animals but see we'll talk about that in a second but just know that these custom exempt facilities are not automatically exempted they apply for custom exemption for that custom exemption from the louisiana department of agriculture and forestry we oversee them we check in on these places generally once a quarter right now unless there's some kind of problem at the facility we'll go more often but usually we check in on once a quarter and keep tabs on them usually have a fairly close working relationship with these facilities and if you want to see what custom exempt facilities are out there on right now you can see here i have the website listed at the bottom but as always you can google ldaf meet and find that list of the facilities it's right above we have a big map on there and i'll show you that at the end of the presentation as well so let's get into direct marketing so direct marketing is extremely useful if you're a farmer you're raising beef and you want to sell them to people a lot of times people are selling them over facebook or just you know other social media anything like that it's become very popular especially in this uh covid landscape that we're in right now um but yeah you can sell your live animals as you see uh and deliver the live animals to the process and plant for the customers uh but we're all we're dealing with live animals at this point the animal must be placed in the owner's name before slaughter very very important once the animal is processed you can deliver them for a fee or as a courtesy you can sell a live animal to more than one person as long as the animal is registered in each owner's name prior to delivery so what uh the sticking point with this is that you gotta line all this stuff up beforehand so that can be difficult um it can't be sold after delivery to people uh to your customers everything's gotta be set in stone before you deliver it to that slaughterhouse the the inspector if they're there or the slaughterhouse themselves can ask you for a list of your customers or the the owners of this animal before it's delivered and you have to provide that to them um because they have to know who whose name this is being slaughtered in so once it goes there it's going to be marked not for sale which for direct marketing that's not a problem because the sale has already taken place um and where you run into a little problem here is what if one of the people that you sold it to say you have let's say you have one animal you sell it you you divide it up you have say four packages where you're selling the live animal plan on splitting it four different ways then one of the people backs out well you've still got a live animal so remember they can't back out after the animal is slaughtered because the sale has to take place beforehand so uh we do see a lot of times because that's so inconvenient a lot of people want to receive the product and then pay but you're using an exemption basically to get around inspection and it's allowed because it's such a small amount of people involved in this it's not going to be a widespread like recall type situation uh that's why this is allowed but you're you have to have the sale done beforehand that way you don't have problems on the back end with somebody backing out uh and you're left with a quarter of that animal that you weren't planning on eating is uh is now marked not for sale and you can't get rid of it so had the sale completed beforehand uh it's definitely a big deal with this this exemption so uh let's see private labeling another very common uh request that we have is how do you do private labeling um that's basically like i have here at the top your animals their butcher service but you want to sell it wholesale so the key here is that you're not doing this for your own consumption or your family's consumption you're not trying to direct market it to one two three or four specific people you want to sell it to another store for them to resell it so at this point you've got yourself you've got the butcher slaughter plant what have you involved and then you're going to have a third person here you're going to have the actual business that you're selling it to that's a wholesale sale right there so whenever there's some kind of resale going on that's wholesale if you own the product you are having it butchered it's gonna come back in this scenario with an inspection logo that inspection logo on the product allows you to sell it to a local grocery store sell it to a meat market sell it to a restaurant what have you for that you can set it up with what we call private labeling where on that label instead of having the slaughterhouse or the process and facilities name on the label you have your farms label or your company whatever you would like whatever you would like as the main focal point of the label but it's going to be at the bottom an inspection logo tying that product back to the plant that slaughtered it so you'll have the inspection logo and it'll be that plant's number on there because of that the label itself and the responsibility for that label goes through the actual uh inspected establishment so we as a regulatory agency deal with the inspected establishment on the creation and approval of that label you obviously have some influence over that and a lot of times what we do is we ask the plant do you mind if we deal with the farmer directly it's their inspection logo number on there so it's up to them and generally a private labeling inspected facility will want us to deal with the farmer directly just because it makes everything a lot smoother you're not playing telephone um and it goes a lot faster so with private labeling think you have your animals you want a label on there that reflects your plant your brand your farm what have you um that you can take to another store and sell to them and build your own brand recognition through that so you can see here we have you can have your animal slaughter process and package under inspection you have to make arrangements with the owner if you want that private style label on there it's not a problem generally except some inspector facilities will deal with that it's more of a headache for the inspected facility so some of them don't want to mess with that so you want to definitely clear that with the facility before you get started that they do accept private labels so if you look at the section with private labels here you can go down they're created by the plant management or you the producer your farm name can be on the display it will have a plant number inspection logo and address you see here where if you ever pick up a pack of sausage or uh any kind of meat products that have a full label on there a lot of times you'll see prepared for pack for distributed by uh and that address is usually the private labeler because generally people are trying to funnel any questions business what have you back to their own brand rather than back to the inspected facility the label has to be approved by louisiana department of ag and forestry or usda the state ldaf we approve every single label through the state usda has some generic label approval uh standards but usually we have everything go through the state we approve 100 of labels just because that causes much fewer problems in the future and it's generally we deal with a lot of mom and pops or small organizations that may not have the staff and the research put into it that usda plants do so a lot of times we're teaching people new to this how to do it um so we like to approve everything and it just keeps uh keeps everything accurate and we don't have to worry about having any kind of product pulled off the shelves because the labels are wrong after the fact so make sure everything's clean and good to go before we get started let's see plants may allow the producer to deal directly with ldf hq for approval process like i said and our compliance side of meet inspection will perform an annual review at the location where you're storing the inspected products so there is a registration that goes along with private labeling just because any product that has an inspection logo on it that's being sold somewhere is subject to uh being inspected by us or by usda so usda has their sign up forms for private labelers and we have ours when you go to get your label made just talk to us about it and we'll we'll help you out with that but let's see so limitations so if you go to a state inspected facility um the product may only be sold in the state of louisiana that is a big uh restriction for some people but while we have tried for years to uh get this inequality remedied uh we still haven't been able to but we're always working on that so uh keep up with that let's see usda products may be sold nationwide or in fact globally actually um you cannot buy or sell meat without it being slaughtered under inspection currently there's only one usda red meat slaughter facility in louisiana while there's 14 state inspected red meat slaughter facilities five of which do private labeling so you might ask why if usda allows you to have such a larger distribution range why aren't all of these other facilities usda generally it's because usda inspection is tougher to sign up with they don't offer the same outreach that the state program does um and uh some a lot of times plants apply to usda and usda doesn't allow them to come under inspection for any number of reasons sometimes it's usda staffing issues but generally speaking it's it's a whole lot easier to be under the state inspection for that just because we're here we're close and we are willing to uh share a lot more information with these plants to help them uh get off the ground and they tend to uh stay under state inspection so hopefully one day we'll get the uh the distribution restriction lifted but uh you know not right now so next thing here i have just some examples of what small inspect inspected facilities may look like uh and this is by no means a typical layout because none of our plants are typical they all have their own ideas about where things should be placed how large different sections should be that's not the point of this the point of this is just to show you the types of rooms and facilities that are in these inspector facilities if you're one of these people that are looking to build your own facility um this should give you a good idea of the type of uh of rooms that we're looking for for an inspected facility and you'll see in both of these there'll be some office areas for management and offices for the inspector that's a regulatory requirement to have a place for the inspector itself in that facility so keep that in mind if you are starting to work with your architect or what have you um but yeah generally just a a good idea helps to get started if you are looking to to uh build a place or buy an older place and renovate it just give us a call and we can help you out with that uh we don't give specific designs but we can let you know uh what's expected of these types of facilities so so you can better predict and better gauge what's going to be what it's going to take to get it off the ground so all right so the next thing here is labeling inspected product so generally this is what we're trying to create so uh this is a generic raw beef label um just beef cuts you can see here it's got several parts to it including the the name of the farm itself and this is a a private label so you'd have the name of the farm you'd have the species over to the left you'd have the specific cuts where this is called a check off label where you would just check off whatever it is that you have been packaging and fix this label make sure it's accurate there's a spot at the bottom for the net weight uh you got the address and keep refrigerator keep frozen uh because it is raw product and safe handling instructions with this one this is a beef sausage product you can see it's a little bit different [Music] it has cooking instructions on it and you also see manufactured by and has the plant name on there you can also have distributed by and have the private labeler's address there as well it just has to have an address you see ingredients are always listed most to least and a little bit different but uh there are ways you can modify this so this is by no means the only way to create a label or the only way to design a label so we can talk with you with specifics on any of these things so this is our label approval process here as you can see in step number two is uh we do have a specific person here in this office uh mr gayo he is our label guru we like to call him and he knows an awful lot about a lot of different products and generally people call and consult with him and he'll steer you in the right direction but you can look through this uh process if that's what you're looking to do i'm not going to go over all the the items here but uh this could be very helpful for you a lot of people find this this process confusing so we try to simplify it here for you and uh you say give us giving us a call on the phone usually helps straighten out a lot of any a lot of confusion that people have we also have here the general label requirements uh like we were talking about earlier just more information about each one of these and regulations in case you want to see exactly why these things are required or in what situations they're required but you see on the bottom uh i did want to point out though nutrition facts are uh not always required so you'll want to check and see generally a small a low volume product is not going to require nutrition facts be on there which is a good thing for you because a lot of times people having the nutrition facts run if you cannot find it generically um it it costs a good bit of money so uh if you got just a a raw single ingredient product you can probably find the ingredient facts online without a problem but some people like to put it on there just for their customers benefit but it's not generally a requirement for low volume products all right so our next exemption well sorry not an example retail permitted product so we just got through talking about inspected product um so what is retail permitted um in this case your animals inspected and i say inspected there because any animal that's being sold has to be slaughtered under inspection with this retail permitting we're talking about selling it down the line so any meat that i said animal but any meat that's sold has to be has to come from an inspected source an inspected animal let's see the reason the custom worked earlier is because you sold the live animal you didn't sell the meat um in this case you're selling the meat so the meat has to come from an inspect slaughterhouse all right so after it's inspected you would further retail process it and then it sold to the end consumer when i say retail processed it as you see it's overseen by the louisiana department of health or ldh or by fda for exports permits are issued by your local parish sanitarian so to get a permit to sell retail meaning sell directly to the end consumer you need to contact your local parish health unit and the specific title of the person is a parish sanitarian so they would be the default regulatory agency for non-amenable species and trace amounts of meat and poultry products meaning if it doesn't fall under usda or us louisiana department of ag and forestry it doesn't fall under our regulations it defaults to the department of health um a lot of times people call up department of health for say access deer or something like that and they're told to contact the department of agriculture but it actually does fall under their jurisdiction so usually we'll have to bounce them back and i personally don't like like if somebody calls i like to answer all their questions i don't like to bounce them around to another agency so this is kind of frustrating but as you can see if it doesn't fall under our regulation it defaults back to the department of health so this retail permit is for over-the-counter sales to the end consumer it's not for anybody to resell it so if that's what your plan is this retail permit's not going to help it might help with another aspect of your business but in this particular case it's to the end consumer you can also use it for internet direct sales to the end consumer you cannot sell meat to another business over the internet without being inspected without having that inspection logo on that product so if you had an animal slaughtered under inspection but then it was further processed under retail say at a specialty meets place or something like that a deli that sort of thing you can't then turn around and sell that product to somebody else the retail permitted it goes to the person who's going to be eating it or their household [Music] and that's the the end of that process so if there's another transaction that takes place there then that's wholesale that's going to be something that would have required inspection so a retail permanent product has to be made from usda or ldaf inspected source material like i said source material determines whether or not the product can be shipped out of state as well it'd be whether or not you're going with the federal inspection or state inspection and again uh federal inspection tends to be a little harder to come by plus you can't have an animal slaughtered under state inspection and then have it usda inspected after that so if you're going usda inspection it needs to be slaughtered under usda inspection and processed under you and usda inspection you can have it slaughtered usda inspected and then have it process state inspected deck so keep that in mind as well um last thing no wholesaling amenable products you know amenable meaning it does require inspection if you wholesale it without inspection that's going to be a problem and we would basically talk to you about it and then track down the product and pull it off the shelves so with this retail permit you can't involve a third party in the transaction so if you're planning out your business model and you've got a third party in that transaction uh either it's definitely retail permitted or you have a complicated situation you can always call us and check and see where you think that would fall we take anonymous calls too you know we're more interested in getting it out there what like letting people know what is legal and what is not so that you can continue on um but if you want to call anonymously no problem with that too give you all the same information all right so where can you ship me products we already covered some of this uh it depends on the type of wholesale inspection logo that's on the source material remember the round logo usda stop sign estate that state product and usda can be sent in state only usda can go out of state with internet sales of this retail product ldh non-amenable product can be sent nationwide and fda product can be sent globally so with a meetable product you see here the different scenarios but uh basically like we said state product has to stay in state we also have here a retail exemption which some people have been interested in the past uh it's dealing with very small amounts of meat but the key is here it allows you to sell to say hotels restaurants and institutions a percentage amount has to be sold direct to consumers it's got a uh a maximum dollar value to this exemption but the big take home and why this isn't just the the the full opening of the floodgates uh as it might appear to be for a lot of people is you still have to be retail permitted in this situation so when you hear the word exemption when it comes to a lot of these things exemption doesn't mean you're totally free and clear of all laws of the state or the country it just means you're exempted from one specific thing and usually that one specific thing is day-to-day inspection so again if you have specific questions about that i'd be glad to answer anything i wanted to include here some of the primary source documents that we used these are all federal sources here because we are a cooperative extension of usda like i said we get our policies and regulations through them so if you want to hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak it's right here but what we do is we take these kind of uh generally complicated documents and try and simplify them let's see if you want to contact us ours is the second one on this list here but if you're interested in usda you can contact the dallas district office doretta dunn is the person in that office that works with new applicants so you can call her directly for us talk to anybody in our office fda you have specific contact information there and for the department of health i have on here two websites that's because with department of health you need to call your parish's health unit or if you're in a very rural parish you probably want to call the larger say if you're in a rural parish next to a larger city a lot of times they don't put a pear sanitarian in uh those offices they'll have a health unit in the next parish over that has a sanitary and they'll cover your parish so just know that's the case this website that i have listed here takes you to a map of the state where you just click on your parish and it'll pull up what uh types of health department facilities are in your parish sometimes they have a health unit sometimes they have a pair of sanitary and sometimes they don't so here i have a picture of our website that i've been talking about like i said complicated address but if you google ldaf meet uh the first link will be to here where you will see a list of current state inspected meat and poultry facilities and you have a link for applicants right underneath the map and that second link helpful resources is where you'll find a lot of the information that you've seen in this presentation and there's a whole lot more there too especially if you're looking to open a facility or just want to know more about meat inspection requirements and whatnot they're all it's all listed in there so obviously with this not being a live session won't have any live questions but if you do have any questions by all means get them to me get them to dr edwards and we will try and help you out any way we can thank you all very much i have been brian miller and uh i look forward to talking to you all right that's perfect thank you so much i know there was so much information here that that is going to be useful and i'm sure you'll probably still have a good influx of questions coming in your way um so like you said you can contact him or you can contact me as well i will have all my contact information in the video and podcast description below so please feel free to reach out to me if you have any general questions about our beef brunch series so one more thing brian if you don't mind stop sharing your screen and i'm going to share something real quick right so that should be good um hopefully y'all can see this so if you don't mind we do ask that you please take a survey at the end of end of each webinar that we watch and this just helps us continue with our beef brunch educational series it also gives you the chance to tell us what you what information you would like to hear um so the easy way to do this is to open your uh the camera excuse me on your phone you can view this little qr code here on the right you'll see a banner pop up and you can click that and it takes you straight to the survey i also will have a link to the survey in the video and podcast description as well i think it's five questions it doesn't take you but two to three minutes and again it is very essential for us um to be able to continue on with our programming so with that thank you all um all for watching and thank you brian again for being with us um today all right