AUGUSTA — Among animals that Maureen Barnard raises on her Old Moses Farm in Knox County are rabbits whose meat she’s sold to high-end restaurants and grocery stores in the midcoast area for the past five years.

Barnard told lawmakers recently that because the law requires her to use a regulated slaughterhouse, she needs to drive back and forth two hours each way to the nearest one before she can sell the meat.

A bid to open the door for her to cut out the middleman won approval in the House this week but fell short in the Senate. It may have also put Barnard out of the rabbit-raising business.

Faced with the necessity of paying $6 per rabbit to the slaughterhouse, driving back and forth twice, because she has to return to her farm to weigh the meat before she can sell it, and all the handling involved “it is obviously not a sustainable model,” she said.

Making it easier for small farms to sell products locally is fast becoming a political issue in more than just Maine. Legislation was also introduced this week in Congress to give individual states the freedom to allow custom-slaughtered meat to consumers, restaurants, grocery stores and other potential buyers within their own borders.

“In Maine, we are in the midst of a thriving local foods movement with a growing number of people looking to buy locally-produced meats,” U.S. Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent, said in a written statement.

“But farmers are facing a serious obstacle in meeting that supply due to a limited number of meat processing facilities. It makes no sense that a Maine farmer would have to send their animals halfway across the state when they’re looking to sell the meat to their neighbor.”

Rep. Matthea Daughtry, D-Brunswick, who introduced the rabbit bill, told colleagues that “our one-size-fits-all slaughterhouse rules have been developed in response to large-scale operations that longtime food writer Michael Pollan says are mindlessly applied to small farmers in such a way that before I can sell my neighbor a piece of chicken I’ve got to wrap it up in a million dollars worth of quintuple-permitted processing plant.”

There has to be a better way, she said.

“The local food movement has stimulated a rapidly growing segment of our agriculture, tourism and restaurant economies,” Daughtry said. “Our state has seen a huge increase in the number of small farms supplying the ever-growing demand for local produce at farmers markets and world-class restaurants around the state.”

Even so, however, “it is not so easy to purchase rabbit from the farm down the road. In fact it is near impossible to purchase rabbit in our state right now,” she said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who raises grass-fed beef on her island farm in Maine, said she’s backing a change in the law because she hears constantly from 1st District farmers about a lack of available slaughterhouses.

“The meat they raise is in high demand by local customers who are willing to pay a premium for it,” Pingree said in a prepared statement, but the nearest approved processing facility “could be hours away and the wait list could be months along.”

“That is just crazy and defeats the whole point of locally-produced food,” she said.

There are five USDA-inspected and eight state-inspected meat processors in Maine.

Peeling back the rules requiring their use may create problems for more than just farmers.

The Maine Center for Disease Control said in its testimony on the rabbit measure that the Maine Food Code, the state’s primary food safety rule, requires that all food must come from an approved source — one that conforms with generally recognized standards to protect public health.

It said if legislators passed Daughtry’s bill “eating establishments would be able to purchase unlicensed and uninspected rabbits for preparation and service to the public” and “an increase in foodborne illnesses from foods prepared in eating establishments may result.”

Daughtry said that as she’s explored the rabbit meat issue during the past few years, she’s come to realize “we need to find a way to balance the needs of smaller producers and also ensure the health and safety of consumers.”

“Unlike many of the other animals that we slaughter, rabbits are very easy to process and don’t require the large setup that pigs and cows need,” she said. “Skinning a rabbit is so easy that my mother, who used to raise rabbits for meat, has always compared it to removing a pair of pajamas.”

King said the federal legal change he’s eyeing would give Maine and other states “more flexibility to regulate the processing and local sale of meats – a common-sense measure that will support Maine farmers and the local foods movement, all while maintaining customer safety.”

Existing federal law exempts meat slaughtered for personal, household, guest or employee use from inspection regulations but not any meat intended for sale. Any meat for use by restaurants or other commercial establishments needs to go through a slaughterhouse governed by state or U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations and inspections.

The proposed Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption Act, otherwise known as the Prime Act, would create a new category for meats to be sold in-state that could be governed by state regulators.

“If we can change the federal regulations a little to make it easier to process meat locally, it’s going to help farmers scale up and give local consumers what they want,” said Pingree, who is one of four lawmakers sponsoring the measure.

The other sponsors are King, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.

“Skinning a rabbit is so easy that my mother, who used to raise rabbits for meat, has always compared it to removing a pair of pajamas.” — Rep. Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick

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