Posted January 24, 2011
On a brilliant fall day at Afton Field Farm, Tyler Jones shows off his butchering shed. Jones' farm in Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley boasts an overgrown orchard, a rambling farmhouse and sheds filled with freezers. Jones and his crew will butcher and process between 8,000 and 9,000 chickens here this year, but despite the occasional scattered feathers, the butchering shed looks more like a greenhouse, with concrete floors, big windows and a clear plastic roof. Jones built this facility last year as a solution to a serious problem that stymies many small-scale poultry producers in the West: lack of legal and affordable slaughterhouses.
Nearly all the meat and poultry consumed in the U.S. today comes from just four companies that operate their own U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected slaughterhouses. Of the few remaining USDA-inspected slaughterhouses that serve independent growers, only a handful process poultry. A federal exemption allows farmers who raise 20,000 birds or fewer annually to obtain a state license to butcher their poultry themselves and bypass USDA inspection. But that option is costly and time-consuming: The farmer has to navigate complex permitting requirements and meet both state and federal requirements.
--continued on High Country News
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