USDA, State, and Custom-Exempt Meat Inspection Explained

The Federal Meat Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. 601 et seq.) requires that cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and equines be slaughtered and processed under inspection before the meat is sold. The Act allows two kinds of inspection to satisfy that requirement, federal and state, and carves out a set of exemptions, the most important of which is custom slaughter for the owner of the animal. The route decides the market: federal inspection unlocks every state and export, state inspection unlocks one state, and custom-exempt unlocks nothing except the owner's own freezer.

Two more exemptions sit beside the three routes and matter to buyers. The retail exemption in 9 CFR 303.1(d) lets a butcher shop or grocery cut and grind inspected meat without an inspector on site. The poultry exemptions in 9 CFR 381.10 let a farm slaughter and sell its own birds inside the state. Both are covered below.

A plant that wants to sell meat across state lines applies to FSIS for a federal grant of inspection under 9 CFR Part 304. To hold the grant it must have written Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (9 CFR Part 416), a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plan (9 CFR Part 417), and facilities that meet the sanitation performance standards. Once the grant issues, FSIS assigns an establishment number and stations inspection personnel at the plant. Federal inspectors examine every animal before slaughter (ante-mortem) and every carcass after (post-mortem), and a plant cannot slaughter for sale when an inspector is not present.

Federally inspected product is the only meat that can legally move in interstate commerce without a special program behind it. As of the October 2024 Congressional Research Service count, FSIS field staff worked in about 6,900 federally regulated establishments. Every one that slaughters livestock or poultry is in the registry here: browse federally inspected processors by state or use the finder.

Federal inspection is paid for by congressional appropriations. The plant does not pay for the inspector's regular hours; it pays only overtime and holiday user fees. A federal plant can be any size. The largest packing plants in the country and a one-room locker in a county seat can both hold a federal grant. In states without their own program (20 states plus D.C.), federal inspection is the only inspected route, and small plants there operate under federal grants. The Talmadge-Aiken program, described below, lets state employees do federal inspection work in some of those plants, but the product is still federally inspected and carries the federal mark.

The Wholesome Meat Act of December 15, 1967 (Public Law 90-201) and the Wholesome Poultry Products Act of 1968 (Public Law 90-492) let a state run its own inspection program for plants selling only inside the state, on one condition: the state must impose and enforce requirements at least equal to the federal ones. 9 CFR 321.1 authorizes FSIS to cooperate with such states with advisory, technical, laboratory, and training assistance and to pay up to 50 percent of the program's cost. FSIS audits each program against the at least equal to standard.

As of 2026, 30 states run a program. Twenty-seven have done so for decades; three joined recently: Oregon (cooperative agreement finalized July 28, 2022, the 28th state), Arkansas (October 4, 2022, the 29th), and Nevada (announced November 25, 2025, the 30th). The full list, with links to each state's page, is in the state inspection programs guide.

State-inspected meat is legal to sell only inside the state that inspected it. A Texas state-inspected plant can sell to any Texan, any Texas grocery, any Texas restaurant, but cannot ship a box to Oklahoma. The plant is inspected under the same kind of continuous, animal-by-animal presence as a federal plant, and the product carries the state's legend rather than the USDA legend. The Congressional Research Service counted about 1,450 state-inspected establishments in 29 states in October 2024; USDA's Nevada announcement in November 2025 put the figure at more than 1,500 small processors.

The Cooperative Interstate Shipment program is the exception that lets some state plants sell nationally. Under 9 CFR 321.3 and Part 332, a state plant with 25 or fewer employees in a participating state can be selected to ship interstate under a federal mark. Eleven states participate as of 2026: Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Georgia was added on July 27, 2026. Details are in the CIS guide.

The custom exemption is the route behind almost every half-cow, quarter-hog, and whole-lamb sold off a farm in the country. 9 CFR 303.1(a)(2) exempts from inspection the slaughtering of livestock delivered by the owner for slaughter, and the preparation of the carcass, exclusively for use in the household of the owner, by the owner and members of the household and non-paying guests and employees. No inspector watches the kill. In exchange, the meat cannot be sold, donated, or served to paying customers by anyone.

The custom exemption removes the inspector from the kill floor; it does not remove the plant from oversight. Under 9 CFR 303.1(a)(2)(i) a custom plant must meet the sanitation performance standards of 9 CFR 416.1 through 416.6 (with limited exceptions), keep records of every owner and every animal (9 CFR 303.1(b)(3) and Part 320), comply with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, remove specified risk materials from cattle, and keep any product it sells separate from custom product at all times. FSIS Directive 8160.1, Custom Exempt Review Process, tells FSIS compliance investigators and inspection personnel to review custom plants generally once per year across nine categories including humane handling, recordkeeping, sanitation, pest control, and inedible material control. In the 30 MPI states, the state program runs those reviews under FSIS audit.

Because the meat must belong to the owner before slaughter, farms sell you the live animal, or a share of it, and then deliver it to the custom plant on your behalf. The mechanics, and the state rules that limit how many owners one animal can have, are in custom-exempt slaughter explained and animal shares and herd shares. Custom-exempt plants are flagged in the finder where FSIS or the state lists them.

9 CFR 303.1(d) exempts operations of the types traditionally and usually conducted at retail stores and restaurants, when conducted at a retail store or restaurant for sale in normal retail quantities to consumers. Cutting, grinding, curing, smoking, and packaging inspected meat for the customer in front of you is retail work; slaughter is not. The store must start with inspected meat, must sell at least 75 percent of its dollar volume to household consumers, and may sell to hotels, restaurants, and institutions only up to a dollar limit FSIS resets each year from the Consumer Price Index.

A retail-exempt butcher can cut inspected meat for you; it cannot legally cut custom-exempt meat and sell it, and it cannot slaughter. This is why a farm-to-freezer beef sold by the cut (steaks and roasts in a farmers market cooler) must trace back to a federal or state plant, while a half-cow sold before slaughter traces to a custom plant. The glossary entry on retail exemption and the FSIS exemption guideline (FSIS-GD-2018-0007) cover the edge cases.

The Poultry Products Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. 451 et seq.) has exemptions the meat act does not. 9 CFR 381.10 lets a producer slaughter and sell poultry of its own raising without an inspector present, up to fixed annual limits, provided the birds are healthy, the work is sanitary, records are kept, and the product stays inside the state. FSIS's Guidance for Determining Whether a Poultry Slaughter or Processing Operation is Exempt (FSIS-GD-2006-0001) is the operator's manual for these rules.

No federal poultry exemption allows a sale across a state line, and every exempt package must carry the producer's name, address, and the statement Exempt P.L. 90-492 in place of the inspection legend. A business may claim only one exemption at a time. State rules layer on top and vary widely. The full treatment is in on-farm poultry exemptions; state overlays are on each state page.

The Federal Meat Inspection Act covers amenable species: cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and equines. The Poultry Products Inspection Act covers chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas, ratites, and squab. Everything else is non-amenable, and as FSIS puts it in Directive 8160.1, non-amenable species are not required to be inspected, so the custom exemption provisions do not apply to them either.

Bison, elk, deer, antelope, reindeer, water buffalo, and yak are defined as exotic animals in 9 CFR 352.1, and rabbits are covered by 9 CFR Part 354. Plants may request voluntary inspection of these species under the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, paying FSIS for the inspector's time. Voluntarily inspected product carries a separate official legend authorized under Part 352, and it is what most interstate bison sellers use. Without voluntary inspection, sale of bison or venison is governed by state law, which ranges from requiring a licensed facility to requiring nothing beyond food-code compliance.

A bison package without a USDA legend is not necessarily illegal; a beef package without one is. See buying bison direct and the glossary entries for amenable species and voluntary inspection.

The package tells you. Every route leaves a different mark, and the absence of a mark is itself a signal.

If a seller offers you individual cuts with a Not for Sale mark, walk away; the sale is illegal for the seller and the meat has never been inspected. If a seller offers you individual cuts with a state legend and you are across a state line, the same applies unless the number carries an SE suffix. For a full walkthrough of the other things on a label, see meat labels decoded and the Product of USA rule, which took effect January 1, 2026.

Use the route to pick the purchase, not the other way around.

• You want a half, quarter, or whole animal at the lowest price per pound. The custom route is normal and legal. You buy the live animal or a share of it, the farm delivers it to a custom plant, you fill out a cut sheet, and you pick up boxes stamped Not for Sale. Start with how to buy a half cow and hanging weight vs take-home weight.
• You want individual cuts shipped to your door. The farm must use a federal plant or a CIS plant. Ask for the establishment number and check it in the registry. The producers on the national shipping list all use federally inspected processing.
• You want cuts from a farm stand or farmers market in your own state. Federal or state inspection both work. A state legend is fine as long as you are inside the state.
• You want pastured chicken or turkey from the farm. The farm is probably using a 1,000-bird or 20,000-bird exemption. Ask which one and whether your state allows the sale channel. See buying pasture-raised chicken and turkey.
• You want to know whether the farm's processor is legitimate. Federal and CIS plants are in the FSIS directory and in our registry. State plants are on the state agency's list, linked from each state page. Custom plants are on FSIS and state lists too, but the presence of a plant on the list does not make its meat sellable.

The questions to ask before money changes hands are collected in questions to ask a farmer.