C h a p t e r 1 0

On-Farm and
Mobile Processing
According to Arion Thiboumery of Lorentz
Meats and the Niche Meat Processor Assistance
Network (NMPAN), only when your animal
production volumes exceed four hundred head of
beef, twelve hundred hogs, or two thousand lambs
or goats per year should you start considering
building your own meat-processing plant
(NMPAN, 2014). This will undoubtedly vary
according to your own production and processing
costs. Even if you are at the volumes Thiboumery
mentions, you obviously will need to have a strong
market and should conduct a good feasibility
study just like you would for any other expensive
business venture you are considering.

Building Your Own Facility

Despite the challenges, many farmers are tempted
to bring the animal processing a little closer to
home, and presumably under their control, by
building an on-farm slaughter or processing plant
(or both). However, the regulations for on-farm
abattoirs are the same as for off-farm facilities. If
you want to sell meat, the animal must be

processed in either a state- or a federally-inspected

plant. If you want to sell live animals to people
and custom-process them for the customer, you
may be able to get your abattoir approved by your
county or state department of health as a
custom-exempt processing facility. As a customexempt facility, you are not allowed to sell meat
unless you buy in USDA- or state-stamped
carcasses or fabricated meats. Just because you are
putting something on your farm does not change
the rules about it; it does not exempt you from any
of the laws that other processors face. There is no
right to farm law that exempts you from federal
or state laws regarding meat safety.
Additionally, you must find out what your local
land zoning allows you to do. In many areas you will
not be able to build a processing plant because
county or state zoning laws dont consider that an
appropriate use for your type of land. This is especially true for folks raising animals in urban or
semi-urban areas on land that is not deemed agricultural. But even on agricultural land, the laws
may restrict slaughterhouses. Its sadly ironic: Your
county may allow you to build a 20,000-square-foot

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fruit-processing building, 2 acres of grain storage
silos, or a 10-acre hog manure lagoon, but not an
animal slaughterhouse. Apparently a slaughterhouse is too close to food manufacturing or something like that. An example of this is Gunthorp
Farms of Indiana, profiled in the pig chapter, was
only allowed to build out their on-farm abattoir to
a maximum of 10,000 square feet according to
county rules, yet neighbors can build much larger
hog barns if they want. Find out your countys rules
before you even embark on a feasibility study or
business plan for an on-farm abattoir. They may
stop you in your tracks or require you to apply for a
zoning variance, which may be a lengthy and
expensive process in your county.
As for the logistics of doing on-farm slaughter
or butchering (or both), there are several farming
operations around the country that have built
on-farm slaughter or butchering facilities to process
their own meat and often the meat of neighboring
farmers with some success. Others have purchased
nearby existing abattoirs to take control of the
processing aspect of their business without having
to start from scratch. Still others have teamed up
with neighboring farmers to cooperatively own the
slaughterhouse or the cut-and-wrap operation.
Ownership of the meat-processing infrastructure
may be a viable option for some farmers if planned
thoroughly and executed correctly (just like everything else in business).
Running a meat-processing business involves a
completely different set of skills and risks than
farming does. Indeed, many dedicated meat
processors struggle with issues like insurance,
finding skilled labor, high overhead costs, and
keeping their plants busy year-round. As a farmer
and meat processor, you will have to take on an
ever-increasing list of responsibilities and develop
even more skill sets than you already possess.

Several crucial factors must be met for the slaughtering and meat-fabrication side of your business
to succeed. This research is based on the excellent
online resources and processor expertise of the
NMPAN as well as our speaking directly with a
few farmer-processors. This is good advice when
considering a meat business even if you dont plan
to ever take on the processing yourself. Factors to
research and consider before you open and operate an abattoir include:
1. Established markets. It helps to have established markets before you take on the
meat-processing end of things. You can build
your markets using other processors, for
better or for worse, and create a name for
yourself (for more on building a brand see
chapter 12). Once you have that market
established, then maybe you can embark into
processing. But to make the most efficient,
profitable use of your facility, you will have to
increase volume, probably by a large degree.
Will you be able to find markets for that new
projected volume too?
2. Ownership vs. partnership. Can you invest
in an existing meat-processing business, or
become an owner or a partner such that you
can have more control over the processing
without taking on the full responsibility (and
liability) of running a facility? Have you ever
broached that subject with your favorite
processor? Would you be willing to finance
their expansion or purchase of a new piece of
equipment in exchange for guaranteed
slaughter dates, better quality control of your
meat, or maybe a seat on their board?
3. Existing vs. new. If you decide you must have
your own abattoir, can you buy an existing
custom, state-inspected, or USDA-inspected

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building nearby? An already built facility is
usually cheaper to buy than a from-scratch
facility, with considerably less permitting
needed too. You also wont have to deal with
all the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) attitudes that new plants run up against
(although existing plants may have hostile
neighbors too; see the discussion of Black
Earth Meats in chapter 8). Or, could you go
in on the purchase of an abattoir with several
other producers, to reduce your cash outlay
and risk, and ensure better throughput? On
the other hand, an existing building may not
have a good layout or it may require considerable investment to get up to USDA standards. Buying a bad floorplan may not be
worth it, regardless of how cheap the asking
price might be.
4. Good planning. Just as in farming, develop
a good business plan for your abattoir, not
an if we build it, they will come mentality, something that plant owner Mike
Lorentz found out when he first opened
his USDA-inspected abattoir Lorentz
Meats in Minnesota without the sufficient
volume to cash-flow it properly. He admitted that he hemorrhaged money the first 3
years and barely made it to the profitable
stage he now enjoys (NMPAN, 2013).
Even a good business plan might overestimate volume: Expect a few lean years to
build up the animal volume and client base
that you need for the size of your facility.
Assume that everything will take twice as
long, cost twice as much, and that you will
have half the volume you need to get
things started. Next, make a plan for
survival in those first couple years when
you are undercapacity.

5. Volume and throughput. Just like any other

abattoir, sufficient volume of animals is
necessary to keep the facility running and
keep employees on payroll. If you have no
employees and are completely family-run,
you may have more flexibility to slow down
or close for a few months out of the year.
However, keep in mind the overhead costs
that must be paid even when your plant is
seasonally closed. How are you going to
ensure the volume you need to run through
the plant? Can you produce animals yearround yourself or are there enough other
farmers in the area that you can work with to
bring you animals (or buy them in)? How
deep is your relationship with those other
producers? (Hopefully you havent ostracized
any of them in the past!) Will increasing
your animal volume to keep your abattoir
running put strain on your land, people, and
other critical resources? If you will rely on
other local producers for your throughput,
have they already begun to increase production or will you have to wait one or two years
before they have sufficient numbers of
animals? If you can, start talking to them
well ahead of time before you open your
doors. Will Harris of White Oak Pastures is
a great example of someone who is working
with several nearby producers to have the
throughput he needs for his plant. Because
they follow his production protocols, he buys
their cattle and sheep and markets them
under his brand too.
6. Anchor customers. You normally cant
support a facility and all the skilled labor you
need to operate it effectively with only the
volume that small-scale direct marketers or
backyard enthusiasts might bring you. You

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need a couple of anchor customers that will
be there every week with real volume
(another Mike Lorentz pearl of wisdom).
Can you be your own anchor customer?
Also, offering fee-for-service processing in
addition to processing your own animals can
smooth out throughput issues. You can later
drop this service as you scale up your own
animal production, if you so choose.
7. Butcher first, slaughter later. Consider adding a butchering facility before you add a
slaughter component. Build up your market
first before taking on slaughtering, which
requires considerably more infrastructure,
permitting, inspections, and so on. Also, good,
quality meat fabrication is normally the bottleneck in different regions anyway, so its the
most logical place to focus. Likewise, unless
you plan on selling across state lines, the
butchering does not have to be USDAinspected; your facility can instead be
inspected by your state or your county departments of health (or food safety)though you
will still have to develop HACCP plans and
run a clean facility. And if you think you may
want to add a slaughter component in the
future, check into your local zoning to see if
that will even be possible. You dont want to
plan for something that will be legally impossible to do in the future.
8. Flexibility. You must build in flexibility and
adaptability to market changes and the
ever-changing tastes of customers. For
example, can you add value-added products,
ready-to-eat meats, a retail shop, or a deli?
Keep in mind, though, that just because a
meat product is considered value-added
does not mean you will make more money
on it. They require more processing, labor,

ingredients, and specialized equipment.

Also, you might be able to do both customexempt work and inspected work in the same
building, which would broaden your set of
potential processing customers.
9. Cash flow. How will you keep your plant busy
year-round and pay the bills? How can you
find enough customers who will pay on
time? Wholesale accounts like grocers and
restaurants often take 30 to 60 days to pay:
How will you provide cash flow in the intervening time? Striking a balance between
cash buyers and wholesale buyers will probably be crucial. Likewise, keep in mind that
under the Packers and Stockyards Act, if you
buy animals from other producers, you have
to pay them within 48 hours of receiving the
animal (actually by the close of the next
business day). Yet the buyers of that meat
(restaurants, institutions, grocers) may take
60 days to pay you for that meat. What will
you do during those cash-flow gaps?
10. Retail component. Many experts suggest
adding a retail component to your abattoir so
you can test out your market, build your
consumer base, get regular feedback from
customers, and sell all the parts of the carcass.
Can you add a small butcher counter or retail
freezer case to the front of the building and
allow customers to come in and buy direct?
Will this require more labor or can customers be served by existing butchering staff or
via a self-serve system? Having a retail case
might also smooth out labor hours for your
employees that you want to keep on yearround by having something to keep them
occupied with.
11. Scale. You have to have the right number of
animals going through your plant and the

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right number of customers buying that meat.
Finding that sweet spot is challenging and
has led to many plant closures. Consider this
question posed by a failed North Dakota
cooperative processing plant: Are you too big
for local markets but too small for national
markets? Can you identify a regional customer
or set of larger producers that will keep you
running? Additionally, you will not have the
economies of scale of larger processing facilities. You cannot spread your capital costs over
a high volume of animals. How then will you
cover your operational, overhead, and capital
costs? Can you add value to each carcass to
earn more money per carcass? How will you
make your packer margins (just like the big
guys) for the hides, offal, feet, and blood?
12. Cost. Building an inspected facility is expensive. Add at least one or two more zeroes to
your estimate. Where will you come up with
that money? How will you stay afloat in the
first couple of years before you break even?
White Oak Pastures said they spent $2.2
million to build their red meat plant and
$1.5 million to build their poultry plant
(both USDA-inspected) in Georgia. Little
Farms LLC spent $110,000 to build their
custom-exempt poultry plant in Washington.
Acre Station Meat Farm of North Carolina
said if they had to build today what their
parents built in the 1970s, it would easily
cost around $2 million. Do you have access
to that kind of money? Can you afford the
high debt load that will come along with
those figures? If you have to bring in a private
investor(s), are you willing to give up equity
and probably some control?
13. Labor. Will you be able to find the skilled
labor to operate the facility (including your-

self )? Just as other abattoirs struggle to find

good, skilled labor, your operation may run
into the same shortage of butchers. Many
meat processors say they have a hard time
finding trained butchers who will stick
around, so they end up just training local
people who will be with them for the long
term. Likewise, do you want to manage a
bunch of employees (yet another skill set)?
14. Cold-chain logistics. How will you manage
the cold storage and transportation logistics
of the meat? Can you afford to take that on as
well, or will you need to contract that out? Is
there anybody in your area that already does
this, or will you have to incubate a new business
to do your cold storage and transportation?
15. Value-added products. Making value
added meat products can be very expensive. Not only do they usually require
specialized equipment, individual HACCP
plans for each process, and significantly
more labor, but the price people expect to
pay for those products might not cover
those added costs. For example, consumers
are used to paying very little for hot dogs,
a product that comes from scrap in the big
meatpacking facilities. In a small plant, a
buffalo-chopper may be expensive relative
to the volume of meat run through it. Hot
dogs are labor-intensive too; thus many
small plants choose not to do them. This is
true for a smokehouse as well: According
to small-plant owner Greg Gunthorp, it
takes one or two people running it all the
time. You dont turn on a smokehouse for a
couple of hours to run a batch of 20 pounds
of bacon. You need to fill that smokehouse
to its capacity and run it all day, with more
like 400 pounds of bacon. That may take 20

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pigs worth of bellies to fill the smokehouse
properly and run it to capacity. Do you have
that many pigs?
* * *

Examples of several unique on-farm abattoirs

that appear to be on the track to financial success
include:

White Oak Pastures (Bluffton, Georgia)

White Oak Pastures includes two relatively new
plants, one for red meat and the other for poultry. The red meat plant processes five species
(cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, and rabbits) while the
poultry plant also does five species (chickens,
turkeys, geese, ducks, and guinea fowl) with
around 110 employees and growing. White Oak
Pastures (WOP) meat plants are located on a
fifth-generation farm owned by the Harris family.
The Harrises were conventional cattle people for
nearly 150 years. Then fifth-generation son Will
Harris decided to switch to a grassfed beef operation and began direct-marketing some of his
meat. He started out using outside processors at
first, but there was always a glitchquality issues,
scheduling, following cutting instructions, or
something else. Will even offered to finance his
local processor to expand in order to be able to
process more of Wills animals, but the processor
was not interested. Consequently, after a lot of
deliberation and planning, Will Harris opened a
full-service, USDA-inspected red meat slaughterhouse on his farm. He added a poultry plant a
couple of years ago to diversify even further. It
should be noted that the poultry plant is a fully
inspected USDA facility, well beyond the twenty-thousand-bird federal exemption level, there-

fore the equipment and infrastructure was more

costly. When interviewed in 2014 WOP was
processing five thousand birds a week of various
species in the poultry plant. They may increase
that level in the future.
In addition to slaughtering and processing ten
different animal species, WOP has a retail butcher
shop, a restaurant, a vegetable CSA, and is starting
an agritourism initiative. WOP raises the majority
of their own animals, but they also are helping
over a dozen local farmers market their meats
under the WOP label (following strict protocols).
All of WOP meat is Animal Welfare Approved,
with the beef and lamb certified as 100 percent
grassfed too. The land itself is certified organic,
along with all the vegetables they also produce for
their CSA. Will participates in three other thirdparty certifications as well.
Will says the only reason he was able to pull off
the construction of these two abattoirs was their
familys strong financial position after 150 years
of farming. He was able to access credit through a
local bank, obtain a Whole Foods loan, and draw
on personal savings accumulated from good business practices. It was not easy at first, as he states:
We hemorrhaged money the first one to two
years while getting to our breakeven point of
about 100 head of beef a week. He now sells 90
percent of his meat through wholesale channels
such as Whole Foods stores and food service
companies and the rest direct via his retail store,
chef-direct, and Internet sales. Wills two daughters have joined him as the sixth generation to be
involved in the farm, now handling the sales and
building the agritourism component to the farm.
For cold-chain logistics and transportation,
WOP owns refrigerated trucks for regional delivery. WOP also excels in their commitment to
sustainability. They compost all solid wastes on

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site and use an anaerobic digester for liquid wastes
and blood from the processing plants. This is one
of the advantages of on-farm abattoirsthey can
close the waste gap by getting the nutrient-rich
slaughter waste back onto the fields that grow the
forage that feeds the animals.

Gunthorp Farms (La Grange, Indiana)

The Gunthorp family operates a poultry and
swine plant, one of the only facilities in the
country that does both. They kill birds in the
morning and pigs in the afternoon. This requires
a considerable cleanup midday during the
one-hour lunch break to switch from poultry to
pigs, especially because their pathogens are similar. They have HACCP plans for slaughter, cut
and wrap, ground meats, partially cooked meat,
rendered fats, ready-to-eat meats, cured meats,
and smoked meats. They use real hickory wood
for all their smoking.
The Gunthorps started with a custom plant for
3 years and then went on to get USDA inspection
to broaden their marketplace. For over 10 years
they have been under USDA inspection with no
problems thus farit helps that Greg has a photographic memory of every USDA FSIS regulatory
code! The Gunthorps process mainly their own
animals but will also do some processing for other
farmers. Especially popular is their real bacon
curing and smoking process; they are one of the few
USDA processors in their region that will do it.
Gunthorp Farms largely processes to order fresh
for restaurants, but does sell some frozen meat in
the winter. Main sales channels are restaurants,
food co-ops, home delivery services, and they have
a mobile BBQ that they take to a few special events
and food fairs. Their main core value is raising
animals on pasture.

Jamison Farm (Latrobe, Pennsylvania)

The Jamisons started their farm in the 1970s and
bought the slaughter plant located 5 miles from
their farm in 1994. Technically it is not an on-farm
plant, but it is a farmer-owned one. The plant had
been a downer cow slaughterhouse that the owner
did not want to run anymore. So the owner
financed John and Sukey Jamison to take over the
plant until they were at the point where they could
qualify for a bank loan. To build a plant of that size
today the Jamisons estimate would cost around $1
million. The capacity of the slaughter plant is
around sixty to seventy lambs a day or fifteen
steers. Buying the plant and doing their own meat
fabrication allowed the Jamisons to work better
with chefs by cutting to their specifications, offering fresh meat, and controlling for quality. It also
allows the Jamisons to make better use of the
whole animal. What the chefs dont typically want
(trimmings, grind, and bones) unless they are
buying whole animals, Jamison Farm makes into
sausages, stews, lamb pies, and stock. John oversees
the animal slaughter and Sukey oversees the
butchering side of the business. In fact, she does a
lot of the value-added products herself. Having
the commercial kitchen at the plant allows them
to do these value-added things that otherwise they
could not do if they had to use an outside USDAinspected processor.
Humane animal handling is important to the
Jamisons. They bring five lambs at a time into the
kill chute so the animals arent stressed. They try
to keep the whole process as calm as possible.
They also custom-kill cattle for other farmers in
their region in order to even out the volume and
throughput in their plant. Jamison Farm slaughters between three thousand and six thousand
lambs a year, either ones that they produced or

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Northstar B ison
Northstar Bison of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, got its
start 20 years ago when Lee and Mary Graese
got their first two bison. Coming from a background running a nutritional products company,
the Graeses were keenly interested in the health
benefits of grassfed meats, especially the low-fat
nature of bison. Having recently purchased a
farm, they had to find a farming pursuit that
would actually pay the mortgage. Bison (also
known as buffalo) meat was beginning to be
recognized in many places as a sweet, lower-fat
alternative to beef. The Graeses quickly built
their herd to meet that increasing demand and
generate income for their family.
Like many animal producers, they worked
with an outside meat processor for many years
while they built their business and established a
brand. The wilder nature of bison proved to be
difficult to round up and transport to the slaughterhouse; the stress they exhibited during the
slaughter process was not good for meat quality
and tenderness. The state of Wisconsin actually
allows the Graeses to field-kill their bison in the
presence of an inspector, but they have to get the
carcass on the rail at the processing plant within
an hour. This short timeline was stressful and
unattainable most times when they were transporting the meat to a processor. Due to a number
of factors, including their desire to scale up and
their processor not being willing to fit in more of
their animals, as well as their desire to make
better use of the whole bison carcass, the Graeses
went on the search to find a meat plant to
purchase themselves. Via word of mouth they
found a plant in Conrath, Wisconsin, that was

shortly going to close its doors if a buyer did not

come along. Even though it is an hour away from
their home farm, they snatched it up for a fair
price. The control of the processing has transformed their business in many positive ways.
Since Lee had always accompanied his
animals to the processor and even helped with
the butchery, he learned the butchery trade without having to go to school for it or apprentice for
years. This made the transition into operating a
meat-processing plant that much easier for them.
They also kept on the most skilled and committed staff that were already working at the plant, so
it was relatively straightforward to get things
back up and running. The Graeses have made a
few changes to the plant, particularly after they
received their Animal Welfare Approved audit,
which suggested a couple of minor changes in the
knock box and holding pens for other animals
that they process such as pigs and lambs. But in
general the plant was in good working order. The
Animal Welfare Approved staff person who
conducted the audit found the field-kill method
of harvest for the bison to be superior to other
methods of slaughter, stating, This was my first
experience with field harvest of bison and it
totally changed my thinking about all other bison
harvest experiences.There is no doubt that the
meat produced by Northstar Bison will be
higher
-quality and have less stress associated
with the entire process.
Because bison are considered a non-amenable
species, they are not required to undergo USDA
inspectionit is voluntary. This is why Northstar
is able to do field-kill with their bison and also

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with their elk. All the amenable species go to the

plant for slaughter and undergo standard anteand post-mortem inspection just like all meats.
Northstar Bison uses state inspection by the
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade
and Consumer Protection, Division of Food
Safety for the field-kill process and their
processing plant.The Conrath plant has land in
pastures next to the buildings, so they transport
the bison and elk there in advance of the slaughter and let them acclimatize for several weeks.
Then they field-kill them and deliver them
straight inside for evisceration.
Owning the plant allows the Graese family
to process animals weekly and sell fresh and

ones they bought from neighboring farmers.

After years of perfecting rotational grazing on
their land, they have come to realize that they
cant raise enough sheep on their land alone without degrading the pasture. To keep the stocking
density down, the Jamisons also buy in weanlings
and finish them for a couple months on their
grass instead of having to care for as many ewes
over the winter.

What About Mobile

Processing Units?
There is a lot of interest around the country in
mobile slaughtering and mobile processing units
(called MSUs or MPUs) for both red meat species
and poultry. An MSU is for red meat species and
can only do slaughter, scalding and skinning, and

frozen meats to a wide variety of customers. They

have grown to become the largest distributors of
grassfed bison in the country and are now
supporting several other grassfed bison producers in their region. They can also take advantage
of the many extra parts of the bison that would
otherwise go to the renderer or pet food trade.
They make edible tallow and soap out of the
extra fat, send the bison hides off to be tanned
and turned into beautiful leather products, and
even use the bison fur, or down as they call it, to
spin into yarn and turn into gorgeous scarves
and other knitwear. This has added an average of
$150 in profit to each head of bison, a significant
amount for a tight-margin business.

evisceration to a hanging carcass, but then the

carcass has to quickly be transported to a fabrication facility nearby. An MPU is for poultry species
(and sometimes rabbit too) and can slaughter and
do some meat fabrication as well because the size
of the animals is much smaller and they dont
require walk-in coolers or rails, which take up a
lot of space on a red-meat MSU. MPUs for poultry have been much easier to get off the ground:
They are significantly cheaper and smaller than
MSUs, and usually dont require a docking station
(that is, power, water, septic, and concrete pad) at
the farms they travel to.
The reasons some people advocate for mobile
slaughter is that some producers want to slaughter
animals on their own farm to reduce animal stress,
ease transportation logistics, and exhibit more
control over the animal harvest in some way
without opening their own facility. Others feel

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that they are too far away from the nearest
inspected slaughterhouse or that the ones that are
close to them dont provide the quality of service
the farmer is looking for. This is all relative, of
course. One farmer may feel that a 2-hour drive is
too much, while others make an 8-hour round
trip without too much grumbling if the price is
right and the service good. Undoubtedly, there are
places in this country that are deficient in slaughterhouses and very remote, such as island communities, which could benefit from mobile processing.
One of the most successful MSUs in the country
resides in the San Juan Islands of Washington
(Island Grown Farmers Cooperative). It works
because farmers own it and are committed to it,
and the only other option is to ferry live animals
to the mainland for slaughtera very expensive
and stressful option for most folks and their
animals. Similarly, an MPU for poultry is off to a
good start on Marthas Vineyard, an upscale island
community off the coast of Massachusetts with
no existing slaughter facilities. MSUs may also
work in regions where high land prices and
wealthy residents take a NIMBY attitude toward
building a slaughterhouse. Places like the Hudson
Valley of New York or around the Puget Sound
and Seattle area of Washington are an example of
where an MSU might work more easily than a
brick-and-mortar slaughterhouse.
An MSU or MPU can also be used to test out
a market before building a stationary facility.
Farmers often outgrow them after a few years as
they scale up their operations to run more animals.
The cost per animal can also be quite high when
compared to a fixed building that has higher
throughput. The higher prices may work for
somebody doing a few animals a year, but once
you make your operation a full-fledged business
where cost control is essential, high slaughter

costs usually dont work. If a cheaper facility is a

couple of hours away and you can take four times
the number of animals to them, that might be a
better option.
For animals that are highly stressed during
handling and transport, mobile processing probably makes the most sense. Range-reared cattle
that spend little time around humans, primitive
sheep breeds, bison, elk, deer, and wild boar may
all be hard to round up, send through chutes, and
load onto a trailer. Of course this depends a lot on
how often they are handled and whether the
breeding program is selecting for calmer animals
(or not). While loaded onto a livestock trailer,
wilder animals may fight or even cause damage to
other animals with their horns, antlers, or tusks.
This damage will translate to damaged meat too.
If you go the custom-exempt sales route, you can
field-harvest many of these species using a regular
custom mobile slaughter truck or, if available, you
can use a USDA-inspected MSU. The state of
Texas actually allows field harvesting of wild
game by rifle with an inspector in the truck
(Broken Arrow Ranch pioneered this). After the
kill, they haul the carcass to a mobile slaughter
truck where they eviscerate and cut the animal in
half. Once its cleaned and hanging on a rail, they
take the hanging carcasses to a USDA-inspected
plant for further processing. If you raise wild
game or wild-type breeds, mobile processing may
be to your advantage.
States may require extensive infrastructure just
to have the MSU located on your farm on slaughter day. They may require a concrete pad for
parking the MSU, a dedicated septic system,
potable (tested) cold and hot water, 220-volt
power, and a flush-toilet bathroom for the inspector. They may also require you to pay a rendering
company to haul off all of the viscera and blood.

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On-Farm and Mobile Processing

All of these costs add up. Poultry MPUs seem to
have an advantage in that they are much less
expensive to build and often dont require any
special infrastructure on a farm. However, if your
state or county does not allow on-farm composting of offal, blood, and feathers, you may have to
pay a rendering service to come and haul those
materials away. That, of course, is a shame, since

those materials are valuable fertility sources. From

a biosecurity standpoint, however, they can transmit pathogens such as salmonella or campylobacter to your poultry pastures unless they are
properly composted (Trimble et al., 2013). It is
important for anyone who is on-farm poultry
processing to consider how you will handle the
waste and compost it properly.

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