§ 3306 - Licensing
§ 3306. Licensing
(a) No person may engage in intrastate commerce in the business of buying, selling, preparing, processing, packing, storing, transporting, or otherwise handling meat, meat food products, or poultry products, unless that person holds a valid license issued under this chapter. Categories of licensure shall include: commercial slaughterers, custom slaughterers, commercial processors, custom processors, wholesale distributors, retail vendors, meat and poultry product brokers, renderers, public warehousemen, animal food manufacturers, handlers of dead, dying, disabled, or diseased animals, and any other category which the secretary may by rule establish.
(b) The owner or operator of each plant or establishment of the kind specified in subsection (a) of this section shall apply in writing to the secretary on a form prescribed by him or her for a license to operate the plant. In case of change of ownership or change of location, a new application shall be made. Any person engaged in more than one licensed activity shall obtain separate licenses for each activity.
(c) The head of service shall investigate all circumstances in connection with the application for license to determine whether the applicable requirements of this chapter and rules made under it have been complied with. The secretary shall grant or refuse the license upon the basis of all information available to him or her including all facts disclosed by investigation. Each license shall bear an identifying number.
(d) The annual fee for a license for a retail vendor is $15.00 and for all other plants, establishments, and related businesses listed under subsection (a) of this section shall be $50.00. All licenses issued under this section shall take effect January 1 and expire on December 31 of the same year.
(e) The secretary may, after notice and opportunity for hearing, refuse to grant, suspend, revoke, or take any other action which he or she deems appropriate concerning any license, if he or she determines that any false statement was made in the application or if he or she finds that there is any failure to comply with this chapter or the rules made under it.
(f) Itinerant custom slaughterers, who slaughter solely at a person's home or farm and who do not own, operate or work at a slaughtering plant shall be exempt from the licensing provisions of this section. An itinerant custom slaughterer may slaughter livestock owned by an individual who has entered into a contract with a person to raise the livestock on the farm where it is intended to be slaughtered.
(g) Producers of livestock and livestock dealers who sell carcasses to or through inspected slaughterhouses are exempt from having to obtain a wholesale distributor's license under this section. All other licensing provisions shall be applicable to such an individual. (Added 1985, No. 226 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, eff. June 2, 1986; amended 1989, No. 257 (Adj. Sess.), § 15; 1991, No. 228 (Adj. Sess.), § 2; 2001, No. 143 (Adj. Sess.), § 40, eff. June 21, 2002; 2003, No. 42, § 2, eff. May 27, 2003; 2007, No. 207 (Adj. Sess.), § 5, eff. April 15, 2009.)