Push to Eat Local Food Is Hampered by Shortage (of slaughterhouses)

[phantom power]

Business opportunities in the future economy.

In what could be a major setback for America’s local-food movement, championed by so-called locavores, independent farmers around the country say they are forced to make slaughter appointments before animals are born and to drive hundreds of miles to facilities, adding to their costs and causing stress to livestock.

As a result, they are scaling back on plans to expand their farms because local processors cannot handle any more animals.

“It’s pretty clear there needs to be attention paid to this,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview. “Particularly in the Northeast, where there is indeed a backlog and lengthy wait for slaughter facilities.”

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the number of slaughterhouses nationwide declined to 809 in 2008 from 1,211 in 1992, while the number of small farmers has increased by 108,000 in the past five years.

Fewer slaughterhouses to process local meat means less of it in butcher shops, grocery stores and restaurants. Chefs throughout the Northeast are partnering with farms to add locally-raised meat to their menus, satisfying a customer demand. But it is not always easy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/28slaughter.html

[MineralMan]

1. Let the locovores eat cabbages.

Or, as Marie Antoinette would have said:

Laissez les locovores manger des choux.

[zipplewrath]

2. Sounds like a business opportunity

One of those farmers needs to set up their own butchering operation.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Channel your inner butcher.

[HippieCowgirl]

5. GMTA

I suppose that getting a local slaughterhouse built would mean lots of permits, government inspectors, and regulations. Once you're past those hurdles, it should be a sustainable business.

Plenty of small places around here will process game that you bring in. You can show up with a deer carcuas and they're glad to help. Show up with a home-slaughtered pig, and you're out of luck. Some kind of state regulation.

[SPedigrees]

6. Good point. We have LOTS of individuals who process

deer out of their homes.

[SPedigrees]

4. I think that PETA is to blame for this. At least in regard to horse slaughter they are, and

probably cattle as well. The result is that poor beasts must travel hundreds of miles to a foreign abatoir. In Canada humane methods are probably up to par, but I wouldn't vouch for slaughter methods in Mexico.

It's impossible to get custom cuts of meat, even from a local "butcher." They basically chop up pre-carved sections of mass produced animals with the fat and organs removed.

If I were younger and could deal with slaughtering a domestic animal that I have a relationship with, I'd be raising my own meat. Raising chickens still flits through my mind....

We've always had our horses put down by our vet at our home when their time came, and then the remains hauled away to a rendering plant. Over the decades all of these places are out of business, and only one guy in our area still does this, for a small price (about $100 when we lost the last one.) I just hope he's still around when we lose the lone survivor, aged 34 below

[cprise]

7. This highlights how much more infrastructure-intensive

...meats (esp. beef and pork) are over fresh vegetables.

Maybe if we cut back on eating meat, and stopped subsidizing cattle feeds, the modes of meat production would shift back to more local forms anyhow.

[hunter]

8. In my great grandmother's homes, you always knew where the meat came from.

There would be fewer trout in the canal, fewer chickens in the yard, fewer rabbits in the hutches, and occasionally a cow, pig, or lamb would go missing. They didn't buy meat ever, which was probably wise in their time when maybe the safety of the food supply wasn't as trusted.

My dad's that way too sometimes. When I was a kid our freezer was full of fish we caught or lambs or pigs we raised or something a hunter friend had shared.

Some of my siblings are still big meat eaters, some of us don't eat much meat at all.

I'm among those who don't regularly eat meat. Lately I'm pretty much a vegetarian. If I have any meat for Easter, mostly I'll be doing it to be polite.

[unabelladonna]

9. easy remedy for that problem

don't eat meat/fowl/etc.
i don't go higher on the food chain than creatures of the sea(and fruits and vegetables).