Slaughterhouse High

Although this article is specific to Northern California, it adresses some of the issues facing small grassfed/finished beef ranchers today. It was originally published in the spring issue of Edible San Francisco.

The last time you picked up an apple at the grocery store you probably had a pretty good idea of where it came from. Besides the identifying label conveniently stuck to it’s side, you also know it came from a tree. Pretty simple really. The tree blossoms, the blossom turns into fruit, the fruit ripens (well, sometimes), then it’s picked and shipped to the supermarket.

But what about the last time you purchased a steak? It may have been stamped with the ranch where the cattle were raised, but it doesn’t tell you where it was killed, cut and wrapped (not that you really want to know, but maybe you should). Although they’re mostly invisible, slaughterhouses and meat processing plants are a vital part of the agricultural infrastructure. With fruits and vegetables, what you see is what you get (assuming they aren’t drenched with pesticides and imported from another country). But when it comes to meat, most consumers would prefer that the seeing be left unseen.

Local dairies and beef ranchers have put the Bay Area on the gastronomical map. They are vitally important to the economy as well as part of the region’s agricultural heritage. If you took a look at their wish-list, somewhere near the top would be the word “abattoir”, which is another word for slaughterhouse (from the French, abattre, meaning to strike down). The following is the answer to your likely question, why?

Say a prayer for the cow

Rob Hurlbut was setting up his grill at Baker Beach one evening when he heard the words “Niman Ranch” from another group near-by. As his ears perked up, he looked over to see a young woman unwrapping a pile of steaks. “You know what makes these steaks so good” she said holding them up with the reverence reserved for an armful of white truffles, “Niman Ranch says a prayer for each cow before they slaughter it.”

Hurlbut, the (now former) CEO of Niman Ranch, has seen his fair share of cattle led to the slaughterhouse, but he admits to never having uttered a prayer for them. He related this story to me after I pegged him on the sustainability of raising cattle in the Bay Area and trucking it all the way to Utah for slaughter. “Quite a bit of fossil fuel devoted to plating a steak,” I said, only half-joking.

But Hurlbut’s response was enlightening. It turns out Niman Ranch sends its Bay Area raised herd to Hyrum, Utah for a number of different reasons and first and foremost is that there just aren’t many local slaughterhouses or meat processing facilities left, especially in Marin County. At one time there were about 20 USDA approved slaughterhouses in Northern California. Now it’s down to only three.

The Swift-owned slaughterhouse in Hyrum is right down the road from the Niman Ranch feedlot in Caldwell, Idaho. The engaging story on why they send their cattle to Idaho to be finished can be found in Janet Fletcher and Bill Niman’s The Niman Ranch Cookbook (Chronicle Books/2006). The short answer is that their privately owned feedlot gives them personal control over the welfare of each head of cattle, which is the opposite should they be sent to the perhaps more convenient, but much larger, 100,000 head feedlots that span California’s Central Valley. It’s also that the Swift facility is one of the few remaining “fat cattle” abattoirs in the Northwest.

“Fat cattle” is a term that refers to cattle raised for meat (think steaks), and the Hyrum slaughterhouse is specifically designed to break down a carcass for the meat trade. Slaughterhouses that kill “cull cows” from breeding herds and the dairy industry are geared to the ground beef trade because the cows are bred for their milk producing prowess, not the flavor of their meat.

If a fast-growing operation like Niman Ranch is sending their cattle all the way to Utah for slaughter (and bringing the carcasses back to Oakland for processing), what does that mean for the Bay Area’s ranching future? In an ideal world it would seem only natural that you would slaughter your livestock on the same farm or ranch on which they were raised. Sure, a rancher can walk up to any cow in his herd and butcher it on the spot, but they just can’t sell it to you. There’s the matter of those annoying USDA regulations that insist on-farm slaughter is for the personal consumption of the rancher only.

Then again, most ranchers aren’t master butchers, which explains some of the logic behind the mandate that cattle for wholesale/resale can only be slaughtered at USDA certified facilities (note; please excuse me for using logic and USDA in the same sentence, I know it’s a dangerous precedent).

It just so happens that the only USDA inspected slaughterhouse in the Bay Area, Rancho Feeding Corp. in Petaluma is slated to cease operations in the next few years.

Rancho

The Rancho Feeding Corp. occupies a stretch of road in Petaluma right down the block from the Village Premium Outlet Mall (nothing like putting Saks Fifth Avenue next to a feedlot). Slaughterhouses generally fall into the out-of-sight and downwind category of American agriculture, but Petaluma has grown up around Rancho and the real estate on which it sits is now worth a pretty penny. Babe Amaral has owned Rancho since 1970 but is retiring in the next couple of years and the land will eventually be sold to developers.

Unlike the Utah plant where Niman Ranch sends their cattle, the Rancho slaughterhouse is conveniently located in the middle of Sonoma and Marin County’s dairy region for a reason. You see, there is no retirement community for dairy cows that quit producing milk, they are sent to slaughter. Or to be more specific - sorry - ground up into hamburger meat (the fast food industry is dependent on dairy cows as a meat source). Dairy cattle are culled for various reasons: poor milking history, bad disposition, genetic selection, injury, disease and old age. Surprisingly, the average cull rate in the dairy industry is about 30 percent, which means that each year almost a third of the dairy cows in the U.S. are slaughtered and replaced by new milking cows.

A lot of Rancho’s slaughterhouse business comes from the region’s dairy farms and the 30% percent turnover ratio begins to make sense when you consider that dairy ranchers breed cows with bulk in mind. The bigger the cow, generally the more milk it produces. But the bulkier the cow, the more injury prone it is, and the injured cow is usually removed from the milking line and sent to slaughter. With the 2003 mad cow scare, injured cows now fall more easily under the “downer” label than before. Downer cows are those that can’t walk their way into a slaughterhouse and are now routinely seen unfit for human consumption. Instead of being sent to slaughter, they end up at the rendering plant.

Don’t forget that dairy cows are the lactating mothers of a herd. When their offspring is a male calf, it is promptly sent off to become what we know as veal. Which of course explains the next door proximity of the Rancho Slaughterhouse to the Rancho Veal Corp. Despite what you may think of the veal industry and its somewhat dubious reputation, it prospers because of our insatiable appetite for milk. If you are really good at connecting the dots, you’ve by now figured out that slurping down a latte made with local milk every morning on the way to work explicitly places you in the food chain that begins on the dairy farm and ends at the slaughterhouse. It’s enough to make some people switch to tea.

Marin

With the Rancho Feeding Corp. due to cease operations in the next couple years, the impact to local dairy farmers and cattle ranchers can’t be underestimated.

Last year the University of California Cooperative Extension conducted a survey among Marin and Sonoma ranchers and found that the most significant constraint in developing new markets for their meat was the limited slaughter and meat processing facilities available to them. Shortening the path between the rancher and the consumer generally guarantees a better product because there’s more accountability with a relationship developing between the consumer and the provider. The rancher also cuts out the middleman, making a higher return on his already slim margin. Sending a truck load of cattle from NorCal to the Central Valley for slaughter not only is an unpleasant experience for the cows (stress from the trip may affect the taste of the meat), but considering rising fuel prices, it can be prohibitively expensive, a cost which eventually gets passed down to the customer.

A recent nationwide Roper poll found that consumers trust small farms more than large industrial farms to produce safe food by a 2:1 margin. In addition, a survey by Food Marketing Institute and the American Meat Institute distilled that more shoppers are buying organic meat because of the superior taste, better nutritional value, and long-term health benefits.

Perhaps the necessity for a local facility of the slaughtering kind is beginning to make sense.

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