By Keith Whitcomb Jr
THE RUTLAND HERALD
A nearly $1.1 million federal investment into a Ferrisburgh slaughterhouse is expected to double its capacity and alleviate a supply chain bottleneck, but more investments are needed.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it has invested $1,096,655 into Vermont Livestock Slaughter & Processing — 76 Depot Road, Ferrisburgh — through the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program.
Nationwide, the USDA plans to spend $223 million through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to boost meat and poultry processing capacity.
Work is underway at the Ferrisburgh facility, said owner Carl Cushing on Thursday.
“Between now, and I would say probably June, the rest of the facility will be remodeled, removed and rebuilt,” he said.
Cushing has owned the business since 2007. It’s one of the few places in Vermont that slaughters and processes farm animals for the meat market.
“I’ve tried to expand a few times, and this time it finally worked out for us,” he said. “We do approximately 15-18 beef a week, and we do anywhere from 15 to 20 hogs and, during this time of year, we’re doing 10-12 lambs per week.”
Once these upgrades are complete, that should double the plant’s processing ability, he said. The business currently employs about 10 people and will seek to hire about 10 more.
“The big thing is, we need to find people that will work. That’s our biggest challenge right now,” said Cushing. “They would be for different jobs within the facility, but we’ll be looking for people. They don’t necessarily have to have experience, we’d be willing to train them, they just need to come in with a desire to learn and work and we’ll be happy to help them help us.”
Part of the planned upgrades features a solar array, which will provide power to the facility, he said.
Greg Cox, owner of Boardman Hill Farm in West Rutland and board president of the Vermont Farmers Food Center on West Street in Rutland City, said that the increase in Vermont Livestock Slaughter & Processing’s capacity certainly will help, but more will be needed as demand rises.
The real bottleneck, he said, isn’t with the number of animals that can be slaughtered in a day, it’s how many can be packaged and processed.
“It’s been an ongoing problem for years, ever since the food police really arrived in full force in the state of Vermont,” he said, referring to the USDA.
The regulations around meat packaging and processing are less about food safety and more about food control, said Cox. Larger farms can bear the associated costs, but smaller farms struggle. It’s also hard for them to book dates for their animals to be slaughtered.
“We fought on that front to get home, farm-slaughtered chickens where you could sell them to restaurants and at farmers markets and CSAs as long as you labeled them farm-slaughtered, non-inspected,” he said.
Cox said he’s got four hogs on his farm that he won’t be able to have slaughtered and cut up until January. This will cost him more money and will lead to the hogs being overly large and of a lesser quality.
This is why the Vermont Farmers Food Center is working to upgrade so it can serve as a meat-processing facility, he said. Animals won’t be slaughtered there, but local farmers will be able to take a slaughtered animal there so they can then cut and process it for sale.
Cox said the food system is too centralized and is only efficient when nothing goes wrong. The pandemic, he said, exposed and widened many problems. These monetary investments are good and needed, he added, but the rules and regulations around meat currently help larger companies while squeezing out smaller ones, without making anyone safer.
Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts said Thursday that the USDA’s investment is welcome and that the state will keep working with it to do more. Not only will it help Vermont businesses, but local consumers wanting to buy meat produced near where they live will benefit as well.
“We’ll need to make more investments,” said Tebbetts. “This is just a start. We’re going to have to continue to seek resources, whether it’s through the state, USDA or through private means.”
With regard to rules and regulations, he said, “We’ve had some productive conversations and there are ways for smaller producers to comply with these regulations.”
Safety is something regulators can’t lose sight of, he said, and there are ways for smaller meat producers to comply and do business.
“We are proud of the USDA’s transformational focus on localizing the food supply chain in America and throughout the Twin States,” stated Sarah Waring, state director of USDA Rural Development in Vermont and New Hampshire, in a USDA release. “More than $1 million in grant funding to Vermont Livestock Slaughter & Processing will bring jobs back to our communities and create more market opportunities for our local farmers.”
These investments help give farmers and ranchers the ability to compete in the market, stated U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
“By jump starting independent processing projects and increasing processing capacity, these investments create more opportunities for farmers and ranchers to get a fair price, while strengthening supply chains, delivering more food produced closer to home for families, expanding economic opportunity and creating jobs in rural America,” he stated.
keith.whitcomb @rutlandherald.com
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