SB 386 Montana Senate · 2025 Regular Session

Provide for the Montana Local Meat Act

SB 386, the Montana Local Meat Act, exempts small-scale ranchers, farms, and home-based processors from state food licensing, inspection, and labeling requirements when selling locally processed meat directly to consumers. It allows these processors to sell meat raised, slaughtered, and processed on their own premises only to "informed end consumers" who are told the meat hasn't been inspected or regulated. The law requires a clear warning label stating the meat is unregulated, prohibits resale or commercial redistribution, and restricts sales to Montana-only transactions. This directly affects local meat producers and consumers seeking direct access to unregulated, locally sourced meat products.
Bill status died 1 of 4 stages cleared
Introduction
Feb 2025
Committee Review
Floor Vote
Governor
Introduced Feb 20, 2025 Last action May 23, 2025
Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

LC1011.pdf SB0386_1.pdf · 3 edits
MINOR
The bill was renamed from LC 1011 to SB 386 and underwent several formatting and capitalization corrections. The most significant substantive change is the removal of the word 'LOCAL' (in all caps) from multiple instances, standardizing the text to use lowercase 'local' consistently throughout the document. No new policies, funding, or eligibility criteria were added or removed.
TECHNICAL

Standardized capitalization by removing all-caps instances of 'LOCAL' and 'PRODUCT' to ensure consistent terminology throughout the bill.

Corrected minor grammatical capitalization errors, such as changing 'MADE' to 'made' and 'PURSUANT' to 'Pursuant'.

Adjusted the bill title and header to reflect the official Senate Bill number (SB 386) instead of the Legislative Committee number (LC 1011).

Floor votes

How they voted

No floor votes recorded yet.
Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions
19
Key actions
0
Committee
1
Amendments
1
Mar 5, 2025
Amended
(S) Tabled in Committee - (S) Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation
upper
Feb 21, 2025
Committee
(S) Referred to Committee - (S) Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation
upper
Feb 20, 2025
Introduced
(S) Introduced
upper
1 primary · 0 co-sponsors

Sponsors

Role
Legislator
Party
State
District
P
Photo of Greg Hertz
Greg Hertz
RRepublican
MT
7