Beware packing plants

[Walnut Beast]

The Nebraska boys are paving the way!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cattle-ranchers-meatpackers-beef-price-inflation-11647874135

https://www.kcur.org/news/2021-11-04/nebplant

[DMcCoy]

Some of the berry farmers here have done the same thing, built their own processing plants.  Easier to do than beef no doubt.

[Don P]

It's less hard to get a grant to think real hard about it. It would be great and I hope it works out for everyone.

[Gary_C]

The Nebraska boys are paving the way!

In 1964 in Mason City, IA a group of cattle feeders in the NC Iowa area formed Blue Ribbon Beef and sold shares originally at $5/share and last I knew the price went up to $17/share. I was in that plant briefly in 1965 while working for a scale company. The plant was built and operated for at least ten years with a colorful history. You can read a bit of the history here IBP, Inc. 

The plant was bought by IBP but that purchase ran afoul of the feds for anti trust violations and they were forced to sell but no buyer could be found. I kind of lost track of what happened to the plant around 1970 but I do know that IBP had frequent labor skirmishes and from what I have heard the workers left work one day and the wrecking cranes were outside and they demolished the plant. I do know for sure the site was turned into a field on the NW side of Mason city and now is part industrial with mixed residential.

All I can say to the "Nebraska boys" is good luck and I hope you are successful. I doubt anyone involved lost any money in the Mason City plant as there is a lot of money to be made in processing. But those big meat packers play for keeps and I recall a lot of violence, mostly between the packers and the workers plus there were implications of mafia involvement, criminal indictments and home bombings. At one time Occidental Petroleum owned IBP and made huge profits. 

There is no doubt of rigged buying practices facing the cattle feeder but whether a new packing plant will cure that is an open question. Allowing state inspected plants to sell across state lines may help but the Packers and Stockyard Division of the USDA has been dragging their feet on that change for years.   

[Walnut Beast]

Very interesting Gary. I will read up on that history. The ranchers say they have half of the 325 million and will finance the rest and plan on breaking ground in the fall

[Nebraska]

The local butcher us building a brand new building and upping  his production because he can't keep up with tbe demand for locally processed beef. He employs 8 to 10 folks.

[Don P]

What I think I know, which ain't much, slaughter and butcher are, or can be, different operations. Our bottleneck is primary processing by a USDA inspected facility. They are few, far between, and over capacity. Those USDA primal cuts can be further broken down there or by a butcher shop with state rather than fed certs and sold to the public. If slaughter is done in a state inspected facility the meat is stamped "not for resale". If you raise more than 1 cow that is an issue. I seem to see over and over groups trying to put together plans for a facility. What seems to me to be large sums of grant money goes out to study the project. And I never see a facility. I do hope it works for them but don't count your chickens before they're axed .

[Gary_C]

Reducing Federal Barriers for the Sale of Meat

There are three types of meat processing facilities.
1.  Federally inspected where the meat can be sold across the US and foreign markets.
2.  State inspected (in 27 states) where the meat can only be sold within the state. There is a new program whereby in some states, the state inspected plants can sell in interstate and foreign markets but the program is narrow in scope and limited to only plants with fewer than 25 employees for some odd reason.
3.  Custom processing facilities where the processor must meet all federal rules but is not subject to the same level of inspections and the meat cannot be sold commercially, even within the state.

These restrictions on the sale of meat have been an issue as long as I can remember and made headlines again during this pandemic. The feds still believe they are the only government body that can protect food safety and the issue continues.

PS- When the federally inspected plants got hit with the pandemic and had to restrict buying I had neighbors offering fat hogs practically for nothing but the local processing plants were booked up for as many as 16 months ahead. There are simply not enough processing facilities available because of the restrictive federal meat inspection rules.

[barbender]

It's horrible what happened to a lot of those hog producers.

[newoodguy78]

It's a wonder more of them didn't go belly up. They're working on small margins and tight schedules as it is. Caring for them while waiting for things to open back up got expensive fast. 

[mudfarmer]

USDA processing capacity still painfully low here. Can make an appointment for next week but if you want one any time in the fall too bad, already booked up. Nothing from September to January.

[Don P]

This came in overnight;
Recent Activities Surrounding the USDA Meat and Poultry Processing Initiatives

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Those USDA primal cuts can be further broken down there or by a butcher shop with state rather than fed certs and sold to the public. If slaughter is done in a state inspected facility the meat is stamped "not for resale". If you raise more than 1 cow that is an issue.

Don I sell quite a bit of whole frozen chickens, sausage, hamburger and bacon that's all marked "not for resale".   To tell you the truth, nobody seems to care and nobody ever once asked about it.  I think people are just happy to have cleaner better food and they don't overly concern themselves with government regulations.   The type of people that are concerned about something like most likely would not buy direct from farm food.

[Southside]

No the customers don't care, but if the wrong govt employee finds out you will care.  That's the issue. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

No the customers don't care, but if the wrong govt employee finds out you will care.  That's the issue.

Nope, I really don't think so. I, along with a host of other farmers I know in our co op have been doing this for over thirty years and not one of us has ever had any problem at all.   Seems like a non issue.   Heck, we have advertised on the internet for 18 of those years sense my daughter was old enough to start doing that.    Before that we had an ad in the newspaper in fact.  Not like any of us are hiding.

[Sedgehammer]

No the customers don't care, but if the wrong govt employee finds out you will care.  That's the issue.

Nope, I really don't think so. I, along with a host of other farmers I know in our co op have been doing this for over thirty years and not one of us has ever had any problem at all.   Seems like a non issue.   Heck, we have advertised on the internet for 18 of those years sense my daughter was old enough to start doing that.    Before that we had an ad in the newspaper in fact.  Not like any of us are hiding.

depends what color state and local gov you have in most of these cases . Just a few years ago the feds arrested an amish farmer for selling raw milk across state lines

@Southside is correct

[kantuckid]

On FB Marketplace & regional FB groups in my area, I see quite a few local livestock producers who offer fresh cut beef & pork in either large packs or customer choice amounts. They state the meat is from an inspected shop, grown on their land. 
When I worked in meat packing in KS, my employer was a state inspected, federally built to standard facility. We were limited to KS only, with an OK plant also limited to OK only. 
I have no idea if these local producers are labeled not for sale or not. We do have a nearby pork slaughterhouse that's selling in retail stores regionally.