South Sound Eats

Jun. 19, 2009 at 9:30pm

Mobile slaughter trailer means more local meat for local markets

Schools and food banks can now be served by USDA-approved unit

Posted by Ed Murrieta in Farming and growing
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Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative cut the ribbon on its USDA-approved mobile slaughtering unit Friday, opening new avenues for western Washington farmers to get their meat to market -- and for local farmers to work together.

"This is very, very big in being able to help farmers to grow for their customers," said Cheryl Ouellette, aka "Cheryl the Pig Lady," the Tacoma farmer who is the "founding mother" of Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative. "Farmers will be able to direct-market their product and know who's consuming their food."

When the mobile slaughter unit goes operational in about two weeks, it will be the third such unit deployed in the greater Puget Sound area and the fourth in Washington. It will provide a missing link in the local food chain -- allowing small farmers to have their locally raised cows, pigs, lambs and goats slaughtered locally, in a government-approved facility, and will enable farmers to sell directly to local meat shops, local restaurants, local schools, and in a big and much needed change, enable farmers to donate their meat to local food banks.

The $237,800 mobile unit, known as an abattoir by the French word for slaughterhouse, will serve Pierce, King, Thurston, Mason, Lewis and Kitsap counties.

Rather than having farmers truck their livestock hours to USDA facilities in Moses Lake, Sunnyside or Sandy, Ore., the mobile slaughterhouse will drive to farms and central locations in the six-county region. Animals will be killed and bled before they enter the trailer, where they will be processed and then shipped to butcher shops, restaurants and other retail locations.

The 42-foot self-contained slaughterhouse-on-wheels was built by TriVan Truck Body in Ferndale. The unit is owned by the Pierce County Conservation District and is leased to Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative at a cost of $1 for the first 18 months. After 18 months, the contract will be reviewed and negotiated, Ouellette said.

"We want farmers to be good stewards of their land," said Sarah Garitone of the Pierce County Conservation District. "That means they have to be profitable."

The mobile slaughter unit will help.

Tracy Smaciarz, vice president of Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative and the owner of Heritage Meats, a USDA-approved processor in Rochester, credits the new mobile slaughter facility with landing an artisan grass-fed beef farmer an account with Canlis, one of Seattle's top restaurants.

"It made it happen," Smaciarz, pointing to the mobile slaughter unit Friday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the WSU Puyallup Research Center. "That farmer would not have her beef slaughtered at a slaughter facility. We made it happen. It's all because of this trailer."

With cutting, hanging and freezer facilities inside the mobile unit, five butchers can handle 24 cows a day, or the equivalent 3 sheep and 2 pigs for every cow. The trailer captures, processes and stores its waste water; it can be dumped at any RV discharge site.

The mobile slaughterhouse fills a void and serves a need: there is no USDA-approved slaughtering facility for beef in western Washington, and having a USDA-approved mobile unit means more cuts of local meat -- steaks, roasts, loins, chops, cuts we previously could not get from most locally grown meat -- will be available at local butchers, farmers markets, in local restaurants.

With a USDA-approved mobile unit, Ouellette said, farmers will be able to participate in the state's Local Farms–Healthy Kids program and can donate meat to local food banks, something they can't do without USDA approval.

"The saddest thing is that there are farmers out there who would gladly donate animals to the food banks," Ouellette said. "They tell vegetable farmers to grow an extra row for the food bank, but as meat farmers we can't donate because there has been no USDA processing facility to get it into the food chain,"

She said the cost of transporting animals to a far-away USDA-approved slaughter facility has made such donations cost prohibitive. "It just becomes too much effort," she said. "At that point, I just take it to the auction."

The mobile slaughter unit gives life to new markets.

"Now we have bridged that," Ouellette said. "Now the food can get into the food banks, now it can get into schools."

The slaughter unit brought farmers together, Ouellette said.

"That's something that has not happened for a very long time," she said. "The industry itself has been isolated. Farmers use to work together, but as commercial farming started and the farms got bigger and bigger, that cooperative spirit kind of went out of style. And a lot of us are new farmers: We don't fit into that old, down-at-the-coffee-shop communications system.

"When farmers get together and realize they can all succeed, there's enough of a market to be able to sell their product, it doesn't have to be a cut-throat situation. We now have farmers cooperating with farmers."

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