Local Farms + Local Butchers = Local Meat Success

Don't have a local butcher in your neck of the woods?  How about hiring a mobile meat butcher to come out?

This is the idea that caused Cheryl Ouellette, of Pig Lady’s Summit farm in Wash., to start the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative to run a traveling slaughterhouse. The mobile abattoir consists of a 45-foot-long trailer where livestock are dispatched and made ready for packaging, all without placing a hoof off the farm. Some of the area producers, especially ones who raise a variety of meat animals, are finally finding a way to run a financially soluble business.

The idea is catching on: By fall of 2010, the USDA recognized nine federally inspected “mobile slaughter units.” Coupled with grants from the Rural Development Agency and a compliance guide from the Food Safety and Inspection Service, mobile abattoirs are geared to be part of the answer to helping small processors and establishments reclaim local meat processing systems.  

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/happy-homesteader/localt-meat-local-butcher-shop-zb0z11zkon.aspx#ixzz1YQxLax2K

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