21 U.S.C. § 464 — Exemptions

(a) Persons exempted. By regulation, and under sanitary conditions the Secretary sets, the Secretary must exempt from specific parts of this chapter: retail dealers who sell poultry products directly to shoppers in their own stores, if the only processing they do is cutting up poultry on-site; for a limited time, anyone processing poultry for commerce, along with their poultry products, if inspection is currently impractical and the exemption would help the law work — but this kind of exemption could not continue past January 1, 1970; and people who slaughter, process, or handle poultry that must follow religious dietary laws, to whatever extent needed to avoid conflicting with those laws while still serving the purposes of this chapter. (b) Territorial exemption. The Secretary may, under sanitary rules the Secretary sets, exempt the slaughter and processing of poultry from inspection in a Territory without its own legislature, when the poultry is only being distributed within that Territory, if inspection isn't practical given the funds available and the exemption would help the law work. (c) Personal slaughtering, custom slaughtering, and small operations. (1) By regulation, and under sanitary conditions the Secretary sets, the Secretary must exempt: someone slaughtering poultry they raised themselves for their own household, guests, and employees; someone who custom-slaughters poultry an owner brought them, for that owner's own household use — as long as the slaughterer isn't in the business of buying or selling poultry products; a poultry producer who slaughters and processes their own healthy poultry on their own premises and distributes it only within the state, territory, or D.C., as long as the product is labeled with the producer's name and address instead of other labeling, and is not misbranded and is clean and fit for food; and a producer or processor who does the same but sells directly to consumers, restaurants, hotels, or boarding houses within the jurisdiction for use in their own meals. These last two exemptions do not apply if the producer buys or sells any other poultry or poultry products that year outside what's described. (2) The Secretary must also, by regulation, exempt small enterprises (including producers) not already covered above, that slaughter or cut up poultry for distribution only within their state, territory, or D.C. — from whatever provisions the Secretary decides fit, as long as consumers stay protected from adulterated or misbranded products, and under whatever sanitary conditions the Secretary sets. (3) These small-scale and direct-to-consumer exemptions do not apply to anyone who, in the current year, slaughters or processes more than 20,000 poultry, or who uses a facility that also handles another producer's poultry — though the Secretary can still grant the exemption on request if it won't undermine the law's purposes. (4) This chapter does not apply at all to a producer's own-raised poultry if the producer slaughters no more than 1,000 birds that year, doesn't buy or sell poultry products beyond their own, and none of the poultry moves in interstate commerce (as defined in section 453(a)). (d) Pizzas containing poultry products. (1) Under conditions the Secretary sets to protect food safety, the Secretary must exempt pizzas containing poultry from inspection if the poultry topping was already inspected, cured or cooked, and passed as ready-to-eat, and the pizzas are served in public or private nonprofit institutions. (2) The Secretary can withdraw, modify, reinstate, or further modify this exemption whenever necessary to protect food safety. (e) Adulteration and misbranding still apply. Even exempted products must still follow this chapter's rules against adulteration and misbranding — except for the requirement to carry the inspection legend — unless subsections (a) and (d) say otherwise. (f) Suspension or termination of exemption. The Secretary can suspend or end anyone's exemption by order, whenever doing so would help the law work as intended.