Where's the beef? Livestock farmers await new slaughterhouse

[ Originally published on: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 ]

ATHOL -- Livestock farmers like David Freeman of Heath have had a long, hard year since the early morning fire that destroyed the Adams Farm Slaughterhouse.

''It's affected us tremendously,'' said Freeman, who has had to drive the 300-mile roundtrip to and from North Ferrisburgh, Vt., twice a week from early September until late last month to bring cattle up and then processed beef back.

''It's been horrible,'' he said. ''Each time it costs $100 to $120 for fuel. I wore out a set of tires on the trailer and my brakes.''

One year after the fire that leveled one of the region's last remaining slaughterhouses, its owners, who had already been planning an expansion to meet the demand, are trying to nail down financing for a meat-processing facility that would be three times larger -- and which virtually everyone agrees is sorely needed.

In fact, with a booming demand for locally grown meat, some of those farmers see the need for an additional slaughterhouse in the region, and are moving ahead to examine how it would fit in.

''It's been a long road,'' said Richard Adams Sr., co-owner of the 50-year-old slaughterhouse that was part of a 129-acre Bearsden Road farm and produced meat from about 500 steer, pigs, goats and lambs a week from around Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont -- before being leveled by a blaze at the busiest time of the year.

''It's been so much red tape,'' in part because they moved the site of the building across the road so it could be expanded.

Adams said he was hoping to get final approval from a couple of banks in the next week, but holiday vacations may delay a schedule that has already seen many postponements.

The family has already cleared the site of what will be a 11,000-square-foot slaughterhouse and hopes to pour concrete footings in the next few weeks for a metal building that would house equipment bought from shut-down meat-processing plants elsewhere, according to Edward Maltby, a consultant on the project.

The hope, he said, is to have a new slaughterhouse operating by May.

The design incorporates a state-of-the-art, stress-free holding area for animals designed by the legendary autistic livestock consultant Temple Grandin. The design also allows for expanded capacity in the future, as the need is demonstrated.

''The need is there,'' he said. ''They're getting phone calls every day from people wanting to know when they can start up again.''

Freeman, for example, has had to rent freezer space at Peters Store in Heath because of scarce capacity at other facilities like the northern Vermont slaughterhouse he's been using.

''Everybody I know is still scrambling,'' he said.

John Wheeler of Wheel-View Farm in Shelburne said he and other farmers have gotten together to share the time and expense of traveling to alternative slaughterhouses in Goffstown, N.H., Benson, Vt., or Canaan, N.Y.

''Other facilities are so busy, they're not able to take our work,'' he said, ''and farmers have to keep their animals longer than they would otherwise have to. We had to tell some stores we couldn't supply them. It's causing a lot of problems.''

Those have extended to the Northampton Co-operative Auction in Whately, where livestock trading has suffered from the loss of Adams, said auctioneer Edward Land.

''Places are trying to take the overflow,'' he said, but someone who's bought 50 or 75 animals, and has found a slaughterhouse in New York that can take 25 of them, is then caught trying to make arrangements with another one elsewhere to handle the rest.

''Nobody's out of business, but it's a hurdle,'' he said.

The need for a federally inspected slaughterhouse is also apparently clear to the state, which awarded the Adams Farm a $300,000 Agricultural Innovation Center grant last May, as well as a $75,000 Agricultural Viability Program grant that had been sought for an expansion even before the fire occurred.

The owners have applied for another $250,000 from the Agricultural Innovation Center, and the town recently submitted a pre-application for $200,000 from the state's Economic Development Fund on behalf of the business.

The state support has been needed to help convince banks that the capital-intensive needs of agricultural enterprise are worth the risk -- especially at a risk-sensitive time and particularly a venture that falls between the cracks of farming and farm-based manufacturing, said Maltby, who has also worked on a dairy processing facility for the Pioneer Valley and similar projects.

Maltby said the Adams project hasn't been helped by the fact that ''all their (financial) records went up in smoke. Our hope was to get it up and working again before the end of the year, but it's been a challenge to satisfy all the different criteria for financing.''

The operation's projections for 2008 estimate more than 16,000 cattle, sheep, goats and calves passing through the facility, up by about one-third from 2006, he said.

With demand like that, Wheeler and other farmers catering to a rising demand for local, grass-fed meat are looking at establishing an additional slaughterhouse in this area.

''It would be really good to get something going locally,'' Wheeler said, adding that a slaughterhouse could be set up on a farm, with a butchering and packing facility set up nearby.''

With more demand for grass-fed beef and for local lamb and pork, Wheeler said, an increasing number of farmers are interested in serving that market, which he believes could easily support an additional slaughterhouse without hurting the Adams operation.

To be certain, the Deerfield-based organization Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture is completing a study funded with a $34,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Although the ''feasibility analysis'' is focused on western and central Massachusetts, CISA is coordinating its work with efforts in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and southeastern Massachusetts to fill the need for small-scale slaughterhouses, said Jessica Cook, program coordinator.

CISA has written letters of support for the Adams rebuilding project, and also believes there is a clear need for additional meat-processing capacity, she said. The results of the study's first phase should be ready next month, said Cook, with a financial analysis ready this spring to look at regulatory challenges and different models of ownership for a small-scale facility.

At the same time, Belchertown-based New England Small Farm Institute is working on a $24,000 state grant to set up a mobile poultry processing system for small-scale and mid-sized farmers.

 

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