Ohio Agriculture Director Applauds Interstate Shipment Agreement

Long-Awaited Federal Program Tears Down Barriers for Small Business Growth

Following an announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Ohio Agriculture Director David T. Daniels applauds a long-awaited cooperative agreement that will allow certain Ohio small businesses to sell their products in other states. Ohio is the first state to be granted a cooperative agreement under new USDA rules that were finalized in 2011.

“Before this agreement was finalized, small and specialty meat processors in Ohio who are inspected daily by the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) were prohibited from selling their products over state lines. You had to be inspected by the federal government to do that despite the fact that our state inspection program has been rated as ‘at least equal to’ the federal program since 1969. It just didn’t make sense,” Daniels said.

Under the new agreement announced by USDA Deputy Secretary Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, small, state-inspected businesses with 25 or fewer employees will now be permitted to sell their products across state lines. Meat products produced in selected establishments will be subject to the same regulatory sampling programs as those established in the federal inspection program.

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said Ben Flinger, president of Great Lakes Smoked Meats which produces smokies and sausages in their Lorain smokehouse. “We’ve been contacted by specialty grocery stores in other states asking to stock our products and I haven’t been able to do business with them until now. This is huge for our company and will allow us to grow and to add jobs.”

“We wanted to be the first state granted approval in this new program because we’re proud of our home-grown companies. For our small and specialty meat processors in Ohio, this is a long-overdue opportunity to expand their customer base and get their products into new markets without making burdensome and costly changes to their facilities,” Daniels said. 

State-inspected establishments wishing to apply for entry into the new program should contact ODA’s Division of Meat Inspection at 614-728-6260.