By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
PLYMOUTH – He may be a lame duck, but Gov. Chris Sununu went down on the farm Wednesday to hold a rather unique bill signing surrounded by a herd of red deer instead of legislators who worked on the bill.
In inking House Bill 119 into law at Bonnie Brae Farm on Route 3, he gave farmers the option of slaughtering their own animals at the farm rather than having to take them to a licensed slaughterhouse for processing.
The bill is very specific in that it allows homestead food operations license to sell meat from uninspected bison, elk or red deer farms like Bonnie Brae, which is owned by Henry Ahern.
Cindy Downing opened the gate and explained that their farm has been in business for about 30 years and sells red deer meat directly to consumers in person and through the mail among other farm products.
“It will allow us to slaughter at the farm,” she said, noting it is expensive and hard to find slaughterhouses these days.
They are now going to Goffstown “which is the only game in town,” she said.
The deer are raised for two to three years before they are slaughtered in the fall months.
Sununu signed the bill without comment and proceeded into the gated area first to meet with the bucks who were not particularly interested in him, the delegation of visitors or their paperwork.
But Ahern grabbed a bucket filled with feed and the group walked to another pasture, along the grassy shores of the Pemigewasset River, with the foothills of the White Mountains in the distance and came upon a large group of female red deer, with one particularly brave doe coming to greet and feed out of the governor’s hand while he held the bill in the other.
Attending were both Fish and Game Executive Director Scott Mason, himself a long-time farmer and Agriculture Commissioner Shawn N. Jasper, who is also from a farming background.
“I’m not sure they like what you just signed,” shouted one person as a reason why the herd was running away from Sununu, who got a chuckle out of it while he eventually enticed them in for a look at what he had in his hand. The other hand from the bill.
A copy of the bill is here https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/billinfo.aspx?id=111&inflect=2