Meat Production & Processing Q&A

Responses by Mike Poteet, Senior Planner, Pierce County Dept. of Planning & Public Works

Resources:

• Meat Production and Processing: Infrastructure and Labor Study in the Central and South Puget Sound Region, 2023
• Good Meat Project – Programs
• WA Meat Up
• Northwest Local Meats – Island Grown Farmers Co-op
• Northwest Meat Processors Association
• Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network
• Meat Production and Processing (WSDA)
• List of USDA-inspected slaughterhouses serving small farms in WA State (WSDA)
• List of licensed Custom-Exempt meat processors (WSDA)
• Contact Mike Poteet with any questions,

Questions & Answers

Q:  You mentioned that some producers don’t have the equipment to transport livestock to a slaughtering unit, and that limited cold storage capacity is an issue as well. How would the concept of parking a mobile processing unit in one location to serve multiple farms work given these infrastructure challenges?

A:   Mobile slaughtering trucks have coolers and freezers in them so they can take carcasses straight to processors. The question is whether the unit would be big enough to act as a central service hub for multiple producers. You might need a separate refrigerated truck to be a hauler. Or you could use a food hub model and create a more developed service hub that had a fixed cold storage facility as part of a delivery network to move carcasses to processors. The question is the level of development and infrastructure you would want at each central service hub. Some could be very rustic with only what is needed to do the slaughter, but if demand was high enough, other sites may benefit from something like a fixed cold storage unit.

Q:  What’s happening in Skagit when it comes to slaughter and processing?

A:   This study did not go that far north. My hope is that this project shows that going out and engaging with the folks who are dealing with these complicated problems is doable and people will share information. This study, and other work WSDA has done recently, do show that there is an interest in the industry to provide this information. Go to the folks in your county and have them look at the work we have done. It’s not perfect, but it does help provide a much clearer picture of possible actions to take.

Q:  Did you identify any options to increase access to and capacity of the folks who deal with the waste parts?

A:   The folks dealing with the wastearevery concerned about losing access toplaces that will take it. There wasn’t really a lot of thought about what to do with it. This didn’t get into the report, but I learned that there are large facilities that are literally monetizing all 1,100 pounds of the animal. Our small processors are not able to do that. What is happening to those waste streams is that a whole lot of burden is being placed just on the marketable meat and not on the hide, the meal, and all those other components that the huge processing facilities can capitalize on. They might be getting pennies on the dollar for those other co-products, but those co-products are paying the utilities, they are paying the bills, so that these large processing facilities can turn more profit on the meat itself. The waste issue is really hard to unpack at this scale because we weren’t talking to the types of facilities that have capacity to handle it. Locally, it is a scale issue for us.

Q:  The processors that utilize all of the animal seem to get the most profit. Are the products made from the byproducts desired by consumers?

A:  Theyaren’t necessarily desired by consumers, but they go into making other products which have value (e.g., the meal goes into other animal feed, the hides are used for leather). It is difficult to generate the value unless you have the scale to separate all those materials and pre-process in a way that is acceptable to the buyers of those raw products.

Q:   Waste is more of an issue for slaughterers than processors. What is being done, or can be done, to alleviate this?

A:   There has to be more recognition by landfills that this is a high need issue directly impacting our farms. If landfills are going to put punitively high prices on it, that is going to impact farms. There has to be some balance between public and private interests that manage those landfills to accept more waste from processing and slaughtering facilities.

Comment from Diane Fish:  In our area, we have a local tribe that is a certified composter and they have monetized waste. They are putting out fish compost which is a great product. Those kinds of relationships are a possible option for the waste stream. Animal waste is high value because it is high in nitrogen. It’s just an issue of managing odors because nobody wants to have a rendering plant or somebody dumping something that smells like dead things in their backyard.

A:   The Washington Organic Recycling Council does a compost training for commercial composting. That is one pathway. WSU in Pierce County has sponsored some workshops. You can compost some of these materials even down to the bone, but again it gets back to scale and capacity. The technology is definitely there.

Q:  I was part of the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative and we struggled with a number of issues which is why Heritage and Puget Sound Processing ended up taking over the mobile unit. One of our big challenges had to do with complying with USDA requirements (e.g,. holding facilities). How has Island Producers Co-op been so successful while Puget Sound struggled? There is huge demand in this area and it seems like it should have worked but it didn’t.

A:   It is quite onerous to meet the standard for mobile USDA meat slaughtering. In the study we don’t heavily promote mobile USDA processing because it is a burden. You need to have a very specific process for managing waste, especially liquid waste. Old dairies used to have ponds that met all the USDA requirements, but we don’t have a lot of those places left. There are some infrastructure issues when it comes to USDA mobile slaughter and I don’t know enough about the Island situation to comment on that.

Q:  Has this info been shared with national advocates proposing the (DIRECT) Act to address many of these issues on the national level much like SB5045 in 2021.

A:  No, it has not. You are welcome to share it if you have a contact to do so.