Bottleneck in the Food Chain: A Shortage of Slaughterhouses in Massachusetts
Photos by Michael Piazza
Will Pickard makes his living milking dairy cows on Idyllvale Farm in Littleton, a 95-acre farm that has been in his family for three generations. As in most dairy operations, the milk from about 65 cows is sold wholesale. “The truck comes and picks it up,” Pickard says, and that’s that, adding that there’s no direct connection with the consumer.
A few years ago, Pickard, who also heads the Middlesex County Farm Bureau, noticed that there was more demand for locally raised meat so he decided to raise some beef cattle for commercial sale. He breeds his Holstein, Jersey and Brown Swiss cows to Angus bulls, and sells the meat at the nearby Spring-Dell Farm Stand. Almost more than the proceeds, Pickard likes meeting the consumers of the animals he’s raised.
To do this, Pickard had to find a slaughterhouse with full-time USDA inspection, a federal requirement for any commercially sold meat. Massachusetts, Pickard says, has done an excellent job of connecting consumers with local food and promoting local meat as well as other agricultural products. However, there are only three commercial slaughterhouses in Massachusetts—Adams Farm in Athol, Blood Farm in Groton and Meatworks in Westport—which are required to have a USDA inspector on site during working hours. The plants also process the meat, which includes hanging the carcass, cutting and packaging. And that creates a dilemma for farmers raising beef, pork, chicken or other animals: The big slaughterhouses that process thousands of animals a day are in the Midwest or elsewhere, and you can’t send a couple of head of cattle or a dozen chickens to Kansas or Iowa for harvesting.
The dichotomy of rising demand for locally raised proteins and the difficulties in getting them to market was highlighted by the pandemic, says Scott Soares, USDA rural development state director for Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. “When you weren’t able to find bacon on the shelves” at the grocery, he says, people began to realize the importance of local food systems. Farmers found new customers during meat shortages due to plant shutdowns in the Midwest and supply chain problems, and consumers started looking for foods, including meat, that were raised close to home.
The Biden Administration and the USDA also took note. Last year the USDA announced plans aimed at strengthening local food systems and markets, including grants to increase meat and poultry processing for small and mid-size producers, technical assistance grants and funds to encourage use of local food in school lunches. Although no USDA grants under this program have been reported by the three slaughterhouses in this state, there have been federal and state grants for meat as well as poultry processors. Poultry processor Reed Farm in Sunderland received $200,000 to move toward USDA certification last year as well as earlier grants from the USDA and the state, and earlier USDA grants were given to Meatworks and others. According to the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR), equipment grants have gone to Adams and Meatworks. Even so, the need for more slaughtering and meat processing availability is acute, say farmers. Sharon Blood of Blood Farm says they are looking to apply for future grants to expand. “The demand is definitely there.”
Pickard takes about six steers a year to Blood Farm. “We’re extremely fortunate,” he says, adding that because it’s only a half-hour away, the animals aren’t in stress while being transported, which he believes improves the quality of the meat. Schedules at Blood and the other MA facilities require farmers to slot slaughtering appointments months ahead, sometimes more than a year, even, as one farmer says, “before you have animals on the ground.” Because there’s such a demand, slaughterhouse schedules are tight, says Noreen Heath-Paniagua, an owner of Adams Farm. She opens her schedule book June 1, and all the slots for the following season are filled within a couple of weeks. The busy season is September into January, farmers and slaughterhouse officials say, because feeding animals over the winter is expensive.
“My favorite order is small farmers,” Heath-Paniagua says, but it’s “a balancing act” to accommodate everyone. Adams Farm, opened in the 1940s, is family-operated, and now has a 17,000-square-foot plant and 4,800-square-foot barn with 43 employees. Pete Lowy of Codman Farm takes his animals to Adams and says he’s built a personal relationship with Heath-Paniagua. “We’ve gone to Noreen at Adams for many, many years,” he says, adding he’s already booked through 2023 for his animals.
Tight scheduling affects farmers in many ways. Mike Gagnon raises vegetables and pigs on Bear Hill Farm in Tyngsboro, near the New Hampshire border. In previous years, he also had beef cattle, but the lack of slaughtering capacity, plus feeding costs, caused him to pull back. Now he’s going to stop commercial sales of pigs, too, and move into lamb. “Local meat would be more available if there were enough slaughtering services,” Gagnon says. This is especially true for smaller animals, since the growing time is less. “It’s very hard to plan two years ahead” for pigs.
The pandemic caused major problems in scheduling, Gagnon says. When the big slaughterhouses closed in the Midwest in 2020 due to COVID, everyone panicked and booked local slaughtering appointments whether they had animals ready or not, resulting in disruptions and cancellations. One result was that Gagnon had to sell some animals at auction for much less than if the meat had been sold through his CSA or at farmers markets. “Bringing an animal to auction means somebody else is making money on your hard work.”
He takes his animals to Lemay & Sons in Goffstown, NH, mirroring what other Massachusetts farmers do. Kristen Kilfoyle Boffo, director of strategic partnerships for Walden Local Meat, which works with 70 farmers in New England and New York, says the wholesaler uses Vermont Packinghouse in North Springfield, and because of its size with 30,000 customers, Walden has standing appointments all year.
Although the Vermont facility works for Walden, Kilfoyle Boffo also points to difficulties, drawing on her previous experience raising chickens.
“As a small farmer, loading animals is stressful,” she says, adding that multi-hour drives one way and then returning to pick up the product, making sure it’s properly chilled, makes for a lot of work.
Meat chickens are very popular items at farmers markets and farm stores, but there are no USDA-inspected chicken processing facilities in MA. Although Reed Farm is working toward USDA certification, that’s still a few years away, says Kat Chang Laznicka, co-owner with her husband, Peter. Now Reed has a state license, says Peter Laznicka, allowing sales only in Massachusetts. Lowy of Codman Farm takes his chickens to USDA-inspected Baffoni Poultry Farm in Rhode Island, saying he’d like to see a USDA-inspected facility built in MA.
However, processing costs are rising for farmers and slaughterhouses alike, and the profit margins are shrinking. Meatworks in Westport was opened in 2018 by the nonprofit Livestock Institute, whose members had been concerned about the lack of slaughtering facilities in historically agricultural Southern MA. Sarah Cogswell, executive director of the Institute, oversees Meatworks operations, and on a chilly autumn day, shows off the tidy cutting rooms and hanging rooms in the facility. All kinds of equipment and supplies from software to cleaning products have gotten more costly, she says, but the biggest increase is in labor costs, which have gone up more than 30% in a year. “When an experienced worker can make more at McDonald’s than here,” she says, you have no option but to raise salaries. Meatworks has between 26 and 30 employees and is hiring weekly, Cogswell says. Heath-Paniagua of Adams Farm says that even finding workers is difficult, adding “people used to want to do this work, but no more.”
One bright spot for Meatworks is a contract with the New Bedford school system to provide ground beef as part of the USDA push to increase local foods in school meals. Cogswell sees this as a win-win both for school systems and for the bottom line of her organization, and says Meatworks is working on similar plans with other nearby school systems.
Meatworks’ experience aligns with benefits that Soares of the USDA and others see in a resilient food system where local food is available, and food producers and businesses that support them thrive. As U.S. Rep. James McGovern says: “Local food systems are good for families, good for farmers and good for the future of our planet.” Consumers have responsibilities, too, Soares says, to “realize the value of that cut of meat” and support local food even if prices are higher.
Slaughterhouses are part of this food system, farmers and officials say. It’s a tough business, Lowy says of Adams Farm, adding: “Thank god they’re doing this.”
This story appeared in the Spring 2023 issue.
