Custom-exempt processing
Custom-exempt livestock processing in Waterboro
You raised it, or you bought it standing. Perry Butcher Co. takes it from there. Beef and pork, cut to the sheet you filled in, by people who have been doing this for more than twenty years.
Plain English
The words you will hear
Processing has its own vocabulary, and nobody enjoys nodding along to terms they do not know. Here is the short version.
- Custom-exempt
- Processing an animal for the person who already owns it. Maine allows this without the carcass going through inspection, on the condition that the meat goes back to the owner rather than into commerce.
- Not for sale
- The marking that goes on every finished package. Custom-exempt meat is for the owner, their household, their non-paying guests and their employees — it cannot be resold by the cut.
- Cut sheet
- The form where you decide what becomes steaks, what becomes roasts and what goes to ground. Fill it in before processing day, not at the counter.
- Hanging weight
- The weight of the carcass after slaughter and before cutting. It is always more than what you carry home, because bone, trim and moisture come off during cutting and ageing.
- Primal
- One of the large sections a carcass is first broken into: chuck, rib, loin and so on. Cut sheets are organized by primal because that is the order the work actually happens in.
Cut sheets
Decide at the kitchen table, not at the counter
The single thing that makes a processing date go smoothly is arriving with your cuts already decided. Both sheets on this site explain what each primal is and what it can become, work on a phone, and print onto one page. Nothing you type into them leaves your device.
for sale
Every package from a custom-exempt animal carries this marking. It means the meat is yours to eat, share with your household and non-paying guests, or feed your employees, but not to sell by the cut. Selling meat requires an inspected plant, which is a different service under a different set of rules.