Overriding the Governor's veto of on-farm slaughter in NH just got moved up to August 19.

🔥 HB 396: LET THE SMALL FARMER FARM — NOT DROWN THEM IN RED TAPE!

New Hampshire House Bill 396 was about more than slaughtering livestock. It was about whether New Hampshire’s small farmers can survive a regulatory system designed for giants.

The bill would have created a limited, controlled pathway for qualifying farmers to process and sell small quantities of livestock directly in New Hampshire—while still requiring sanitation, humane slaughter, refrigeration, labeling, recordkeeping, training, and strict monthly limits.

That matters because regulations that large corporations can absorb can crush a small business. We saw a similar concern with Dodd-Frank: massive compliance requirements can fall disproportionately on smaller financial institutions that don't have armies of lawyers and compliance officers. The same basic problem can arise in agriculture—when compliance costs and regulatory complexity become too great, the little guy exits while the biggest players survive.

HB 396 could have provided a proportional regulatory pathway for small farms without simply throwing the doors open. It recognized that a farmer selling a handful of animals directly to identified New Hampshire customers is operating on a radically different scale from an industrial processor supplying a national market.

https://legiscan.com/NH/bill/HB396/2026

🔥 THE BOTTOM LINE

Food safety matters.

So does economic freedom.

So does competition.

So does keeping small farms alive.

If government regulation becomes so expensive and complicated that only the biggest businesses can afford to comply, regulation stops being a level playing field—it becomes a barrier to entry.

HB 396 was an attempt to keep the little farmer in the game.

DON’T LET “FOOD SAFETY” BECOME AN EXCUSE FOR FOOD-INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION.

Protect the consumer.

Protect accountability.

But don't regulate the small farmer out of existence.

CONTACT YOUR LOCAL STATE REPS. AND TELL THEM TO VOTE TO OVERRIDE GOVERNOR AYOTTE’S VETO OF HB 396 ON AUGUST 19TH.