I hate red tape

No question(s) here, just ranting.
Trying to get the chickens fed on compost thing going and possibly a large enough flock to sell eggs. Government red tape galore. To haul food scraps and compost it with chickens requires basically the same red tape as if I was wanting to start a landfill. Solid Waste Management Department. Selling eggs requires licensing unless you sell them on farm and customers come and get them. Everyone around here already has chickens laying eggs so no customers nearby.

Not a big deal as I'm sure I can find some restaurant or grocery store that is not worried about conforming to gov regs. It's that sort of area. It just sucks to have to be sneaky about things and between that and the egg license for selling, it's not worth the effort to try and make a couple of bucks unless I want to go big time and have a bonafide egg factory.

Every state (country) is going to have differing rules, but around here (NC) if you're hauling food waste to "dump" it you need a permit/licence, if you're hauling food waste to "feed to animals" you just have to re-cook it on site. Perhaps a few drums cut in half and a fire would make them happy? Afterwards just claim you ruined the batch and put it on a convent pile of yard waste?

John Pollard wrote:No question(s) here, just ranting.
Trying to get the chickens fed on compost thing going and possibly a large enough flock to sell eggs. Government red tape galore. To haul food scraps and compost it with chickens requires basically the same red tape as if I was wanting to start a landfill. Solid Waste Management Department. Selling eggs requires licensing unless you sell them on farm and customers come and get them. Everyone around here already has chickens laying eggs so no customers nearby.

Not a big deal as I'm sure I can find some restaurant or grocery store that is not worried about conforming to gov regs. It's that sort of area. It just sucks to have to be sneaky about things and between that and the egg license for selling, it's not worth the effort to try and make a couple of bucks unless I want to go big time and have a bonafide egg factory.

I think we must be in a different part of the Ozarks.......here you can sell from home, at the farmer's market, someone has them at the feed store (one feed store has homegrown eggs and another has raw goats milk in the cooler) the 'healthy' food store has local eggs as does the chamber of commerce occasionally. It just happens here..............local raised fresh eggs everywhere, except towards the holidays when demand goes up and everyone runs out.
Arkansas passed some kind of 'cottage industry' bill, that allows for many things and was pushed through, we thought, by school bake sales and political pie auctions.
I think several restaurants here have folks picking up their scraps for animal feed without any red tape problems. The greasy food places even give away their used oil for a few converted trucks around here.

It could be that no one asks for permission, I suppose, and they just do it.

Judith Browning wrote:
I think we must be in a different part of the Ozarks.......here you can sell from home, at the farmer's market, someone has them at the feed store (one feed store has homegrown eggs and another has raw goats milk in the cooler) the 'healthy' food store has local eggs as does the chamber of commerce occasionally. It just happens here..............local raised fresh eggs everywhere, except towards the holidays when demand goes up and everyone runs out.
Arkansas passed some kind of 'cottage industry' bill, that allows for many things and was pushed through, we thought, by school bake sales and political pie auctions.
I think several restaurants here have folks picking up their scraps for animal feed without any red tape problems. The greasy food places even give away their used oil for a few converted trucks around here.

It could be that no one asks for permission, I suppose, and they just do it.

Yeah, I'm in MO. They just came out with a new license for selling at farmer's markets. The egg license itself is only 5 bucks a year but then you have to have a tax exempt / sales tax license to get the egg license which means you have to have a business name which goes through the State. So technically 3 licenses although I suppose you could use your personal name as a business and forgo the fictitious name thing. Then to get the sales tax license you have to either be in business to show prior gross sales record or if a new business, have a business plan to show your projected sales and then you have to get a surety bond to guarantee that you are financially fit to pay the estimated sales tax collected etc.

A quick search shows that AR has similar rules. "Arkansas Egg Marketing Act" http://alpc.arkansas.gov/regulations/Documents/EggLaw.pdf
Exempt are those with less than 200 hens selling directly from the farm.

I imagine the feed store and health food store have an egg license hanging somewhere. However they've already gone through all the other processes for their larger business. That's fine and I understand it's to protect people but the way it ends up is you have to go big and in one general direction to make it worthwhile. It's also to protect/ensure the gov gets their share. Probably moreso.

For someone who just wants to make their self sufficient lifestyle be financially self sufficient, not make a 6 figure income focusing in one area, it just doesn't work.

John,
Red tape sucks, it's expensive and time consuming. That being said, being "indestructible" has distinct advantages. First and foremost, the ability to walk around as if you have nothing to hide, simply because you have nothing to hide. We're trying to go that route because in the end it's what lets you sleep at night.

I also went the "illegal waste management" route and to some extent I'm still there as I feed them my own kitchen scraps. Sometimes you can "purchase" food that is in reality thrown away, produce for instance. 1 cent per pound or something. Here you need at least a bill of sale and perhaps transport documents if the amount is huge. That at least gets the food on site. "Dumping" it is another affair.

Composting is a huge issue for me too, since I also wanted to do that with the chickens but you can't here without become a waste management facility, at least it seems.
There are organic farmers that have gone the route of gaining composting licenses with all the investment that it requires, concrete slabs and waste-water tanks, but it's not a viable solution for small activities. They allow you to buy compost, but compost doesn't feed chickens.

Self-produced agriculture waste can stay on the land. If you have a big enough land and if you are really talented, it might be possible to feed the chickens from your land, with the only investment being seed. Actually the tendency toward a lack of inputs is in line with permaculture design objectives. It's just hard in the beginning when you're starting with land that needs nutrients, chickens that need feed, etc. Perhaps the law is just forcing a solution upon you: growing more food.

Another option might be to work with a small food-production facility and get them to process your cheaply bought food in the cheapest way possible so that you're actually feeding them a product that you purchased. I'm thinking supermarket produce, cooked down, then mixed with agricultural Bran and put into plastic drums (probably need to be refrigerated at that point until used).

The costs would be higher, but I don't see any red tape here (purchase food, take to government-compliant production facility, have them transform the 'purchased potential waste' into chicken food, buy finished product)

If you can come up with a worthwhile product, maybe you can even sell it to other chicken producers to mitigate your own cost. It would be an alternative to composting, cost very little for everyone, allocate a potential waste to productive use, and maybe even earn you some cash. And nobody is doing solid waste management, technically.

I think there are creative ways around red tape. Bill Mollison is a proponent of the most red tape possible, because it shows how much more creative your design is. It's much better than throwing your hands up and moving to somewhere where they let you do whatever you want (a potential environmental disaster in the hands of the wrong people).

In the end, I feel your pain. I'm sorry there's not an easier solution out of this.

Best of luck,
William

It helps to take what you want to do, split it up in specific actions that you hope to preform and goals that you want to accomplish and work from there.

Each action and each goal can be achieved in a myriad of ways, some are regulated some are not; some are cost-effective, some are expensive; some have huge return on investment, some get nothing.

So, you brainstorm and figure it all out and develop a strategy.

William