here is one result..
When Kathryn Thomas wanted to turn her sheep into lamb chops, the federal government required her to haul them across Puget Sound on a ferry and then drive three hours to reach a suitable slaughterhouse.
Not anymore. These days, the slaughterhouse -- and the feds -- come to her.
A 53-foot tractor-trailer rattles up to her farm on Lopez Island, the rear doors open and the sheep are led inside, where the butcher and federal meat inspector are waiting. When the job is done, the team heads out to the next farm.
The slaughtermobile -- a stainless steel industrial facility on wheels -- is catching on across the country, filling a desperate need in a burgeoning movement to bring people closer to their food. It is also perhaps one of the most visible symbols of a subtle transformation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, long criticized for promoting big agribusiness.
"There are farming operations that are really big and do huge volumes of food and that's part of American agriculture and that's good," Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said. "But there are a lot of people who want to do alternative markets, and we want to find a way to help them find a living and stay in rural America and help those towns and villages thrive. This really is a rural development strategy."
The agency is promoting small meat producers in part by funding and approving more mobile slaughter units, staffing each one with a federal inspector, educating farmers and USDA employees about the units, and setting clear guidelines for farmers who want to build one. In December, the department set up a toll-free help line dedicated to small producers.
"People want to buy their stuff locally and they want to buy it from you instead of the counter at Safeway or Food Lion or from some anonymous slaughterhouse that stuffed it full of antibiotics so it wouldn't get sick," said Dick Stoner, who raises black angus cattle on a farm in Sharpsburg, Md., near the Antietam Civil War battlefield.
Like neighboring farmers, Stoner sells some cattle to bulk slaughterhouses in the West. He has been consumed with the idea of a slaughtermobile ever since he heard Merrigan give a talk six months ago. "We've got all these farms within an hour and a half. All we have to do is connect the buyers in the city with these farms and figure out a way to get the meat to them."
At roughly $250,000, a basic slaughtermobile costs about one-fourth of a permanent facility and is likely to face less opposition from the community. "No one wants to live next to a slaughterhouse," Stoner said. "So getting a new one built, even on a farm, is almost out of the question."
"Mobile slaughter units are a bit of a quick fix," said Joe Cloud, a landscape architect who joined farmer Joel Salatin -- celebrated among the "locavore" movement -- to buy a small slaughterhouse in the Shenandoah Valley in 2007 that was about to shut down. Their operation, T&E Meats, is so busy they are turning away business.
"You still need to cut up the meat, you need saws, grinders, stuffers, vacuum packers, smokehouses, curing areas, drying units and all of these things that take a lot of space," Cloud said. "I just don't see how we're going to rebuild the local community-based system using mobile units."
Merrigan agrees. "This is just one strategy," she said.
by Lindsey Layton of The Washington Post
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