South Sound Eats

Feb. 24, 2009 at 9:51am

Squealing for slaughter trucks

Cheryl the Pig Lady pushes for mobile units to beef up the market for local farmers' products

Posted by Ed Murrieta in Farming and growing, Tacoma
Comments (7)

While automakers and farmers stand at opposite ends of America's fruited plain, Cheryl Ouelette is closing a deal on a meaty big wheeler: a USDA-approved mobile slaughtering truck-and-trailer rig that she and other farmers believe will breathe life into the sales and distribution of local meat in our local market, feeding not only Puget Sound chefs and restaurants, but retail consumers and food banks.

It's a raise-locally, butcher-locally, eat-locally drive that Ouelette, a Summit farmer better known as Cheryl the Pig Lady, takes to Washington, DC, and the White House today.

When the $250,000, 42-foot self-contained slaughterhouse-on-wheels rolls away from its manufacturer, Ferndale's Tri Van, in May, it will be the third such unit deployed in the greater Puget Sound area and the fourth in Washington. It will serve Pierce, King, Thurston, Mason, Lewis and Kitsap counties, processing farm-raised beef, pork and lamb.

The mobile unit, known as an abattoir by the French word for slaughterhouse, will be owned by Pierce Conservation District. The district will lease the rig to The Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative, a group of of farmers, butchers and chefs spearheaded by Ouelette, who's listed as the cooperative's "founding mother."

Ouelette convinced Pierce Conservation District to fund the project a year ago. She said Seattle's Chef's Collaborative recently contributed "start-up capital and start-up encouragement" as well.

"This is what's gonna make farmers profitable and make them good stewards so they can stay on the farms and still be farming," Ouelette said. "Farmers can't afford to buy the trailer. Somebody needs to buy the trailer then the farmers come together and put their money in to run it and operate it."

So far, Ouelette said, 35 individuals in the cooperative have invested $36,000 toward a goal of $500,000. The largest investment was $4,000. The smallest $650.

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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. Heritage Meats of Rochester is currently on board. Ouelette said butchers from Enumclaw to Port Orchard have expressed interest. Ouelette said The Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative is currently too small to handle an account like Whole Foods or PCC Markets, but she said she can easily see the co-op's meat -- labeled and sold by individual farm -- at the gestating Tacoma food co-op.

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, although Ouelette said Tagro is interested in the waste water and any offal to use in its own recycling processes. Ouelette said a place is being sought to park the abattoir when it's not in use, hopefully in a central location like Tacoma.
 
"This is nice and quiet," Ouelette said. "By the end of the day, there's nothing left to remind you of what's been there and what's been done. Very much more humane for the animals. You bring the animals right to it. There are no smells. They're not hearing all other kinds of animals around."

There are money and NIMBY issues, too.

"Nobody can afford to build a new butcher shop," Ouelette said. "There are no new butchers being grown. I just don't know of any communities that would welcome a butcher site. There are water-quality issues, smells, killing animals next to your next-door neighbor. It's just not something that people want as neighbors. It's like the dump."

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 soon be available at local butchers, farmers markets, in local restaurants.

With a USDA-approved mobile unit, Ouelette 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 currently do because of federal regs.

"Lack of a USDA processing facility has prevented sales of meat cuts from farmers to restaurants and others," Ouelette said. "If someone wants to buy directly from the farmer, they have to buy it live. They've got to pay the farmer for the cow. They've got to pay the butcher for the cut and wrap. And they've got to have the freezer to store that much meat. They have to have it halved or whole."

Ouelette said farmers could double the amount of money they make.

She said Tyson, a titan the of mega meat processors, pays $1.26 a pound hanging carcass weight for beef, down 20 cents from a few months ago.

"If they just sold it to a local butcher for the value of that meat, they could double it," Ouelette said. "They should be able to get $2.50 a pound easily from a local butcher for a local carcass. If they want to do the marketing and pay for the cut and wrap, they can make almost three times."

Ouelette pointed to Thundering Hooves, the Walla Walla grass-fed beef operation that built its own abattoir and sells its own meats to restaurants, markets and consumers through its own butcher shop and online. She said she's seen Thundering Hooves' ground beef retail for $6 a pound and its T-bone steaks for $18 per pound.

"Our grass-fed ground beef is selling for $5 a pound," said Outlette, who sells at South Sound farmers markets and directly from her farm.

Ouelette ships her cattle to Sandy, Ore., for slaughter. Her pork is processed in Kapawsin, one of a few remaining USDA facilities that exclusively handles pork.

Ouelette jumped aboard abattoirs three and a half years ago after seeing the prototype that Lopez Island farmer Bruce Dunlop built for the Lopez Community Land Trust. That abattoir -- and the need for local meat processing -- was singled out for praise by food activist Michael Pollan, in the food-policy primer that he planted into the American psyche and economic debate in October.

"Perhaps the single greatest impediment to the return of livestock to the land and the revival of local, grass-based meat production is the disappearance of regional slaughter facilities," Pollan wrote in The New York Times Magazine. "Expanding on its successful pilot program on Lopez Island in Puget Sound, the U.S.D.A. should also introduce a fleet of mobile abattoirs that would go from farm to farm, processing animals humanely and inexpensively. Nothing would do more to make regional, grass-fed meat fully competitive in the market with feedlot meat."

With the new abattoir, Washington will have mobile slaughter units in use, including the one on Lopez Island, one near Everett and Thundering Hooves' abattoir. Ouelette said four abattoir "puts Washington way ahead of anywhere in terms of fixing this problem." She mentioned one abattoir in California, one in New Mexico and one in Montana that only processes buffalo.

"This is a regional effort to fix our problem locally," Ouelette said. "This is how small farmers can be productive. We need to create a level playing field where everyone can have equal access to these tools. So we're asking the state to set up a low-interest loan program because the banks just aren't going to loan on a mobile slaughter unit. It's a good investment in our local sustainability. It's a good investment in being able to get the meat to the food banks and help our agricultural industry.

"Hopefully we'll be able to keep that profitability with the farmer, helping the local butcher shops to be profitable again too. That will hopefully keep all of the economy a little more balanced."

Ouelette is in Washington, DC, today touting abittoirs. Her trip is sponsored by the Washington State Farm Bureau and the farm bureaus of Pierce and King counties. She's schedule to meet with Washington state's Congressional leaders, Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Rep. Adam Smith, and  "as high up the USDA as I can get." She's also due to get an audience with an Obama White House staffer.

"We have to let them know that we have this stimulus plan, that we have this model to fix the meat problem and put it back in the control of the farmers," Ouelette said.

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