May 5, 2008
Local flavor | Maine's five-year-old inspection program has helped boost growth among the state's meat processors
By Nancy English
For Maine's state-inspected slaughterhouses, eating local is a way of life.
Beef, pork and lamb sold from these small businesses arrive from nearby farms or from barns and sheds just steps away. The feed and hay the animals eat often comes from the neighboring fields. And the money from processing that meat ˆ and, for some entrepreneurs, selling that meat in their own farm stores ˆ goes right into these Mainers' pockets.
That was the thinking behind a meat inspection program launched by the state in 2003. "The program was started to give local producers access to markets and to give people access to local meat," says Dr. Henrietta Beaufait, the state veterinarian in charge of the Maine meat inspection program, which allows meat to be sold in retail shops in the state. (The federal farm bill, which was locked in Congressional negotiations as this issue of Mainebiz went to press, includes a provision to allow state-inspected meat to be sold across state lines.)
While the number of U.S. Department of Agriculture meat plants before 2003 varied, finding one nearby that had time to process one or two animals at a time was a challenge. Creating more slaughterhouses for small farmers was the point of the state program. Custom meat plants have been inspected by the state since 2003, and were earlier inspected by the USDA. No inspectors are required to be present at the time of slaughter at these plants, which do not have the ability to provide meat for the retail market, in state or out.
The people tending to the animals that come through the Maine meat program, most from families that have been doing this work for generations, are poised to reap new rewards from customers growing ever more distrustful of the industrial version of their main course.
"There was a jump [in demand] in 2004 because of mad cow disease, and another now because of the recalls," says Beaufait, referring to the massive recall that involved 143 million pounds of meat from at the Hallmark/Westland Meat packing Plant in Chino, Calif., in February.
Maine-inspected meat processors slaughtered 372 steers and heifers in 2007, compared to 296 between October 2004 and September 2005, the period Beaufait studied before presenting the program to the Legislature in the fall of 2005. "It's growing a little bit at a time, and that's the way it should grow," she says.
Maine's slaughterhouses have a tough time surviving, and many augment their income from slaughter fees by selling meat themselves, either in a farm store or wholesale at local markets. Some raise their own cattle, and others buy beef from farms they trust to sell to their customers.
Local meat processors also tout their products' taste compared to the cuts of meat shipped here from enormous Midwestern feedlots and slaughtering plants. Barry Higgins, who grows hay and runs a slaughterhouse at Maple Lane Farms in Charleston, 20 miles north of Bangor, bemoans the product that gets shipped into Maine from the Midwest. At Maple Lane Farms, the newest business in the Maine inspection program, Higgins ages his sides of beef for 14 days, and says the meat has a fabulous flavor ˆ unlike the prime rib he recently ate at a Bangor restaurant. "There just wasn't any flavor. I'd just as soon eat a snowball," Higgins says.
Hands-on work
Pigs are a large part of the slaughter business at L.P. Bisson and Sons, where more than 450 were slaughtered in 2007. The Topsham processor sold some of the meat to customers organizing special events like a Bosnian New Year celebration or a summertime family reunion.
But L.P. Bisson also sells bacon, sausages and ham in a family-owned retail store where Bisson brothers Andy, Arthur and Bob and their sister, Priscille Pollock, work, along with a number of other family members. The ham is smoked and cured on site, and Arthur Bisson says the company's bratwurst recipe is the same as was made by their father. "Everything we do is hands-on," he says.
The economics of the slaughterhouse industry are difficult to pin down. Most sources interviewed for this story declined to discuss revenue figures.
L.P. Bisson processes the most animals of the processors in the Maine-inspected meat program and adds to its income with a busy farm store and a dairy herd. Those businesses bring in roughly $1 million a year, according to Andy Bisson.
Bisson says the diversity of his farm's operations, including the slaughterhouse, make it succeed. "We couldn't just farm, because there's not enough money in farming," he says. "To run the store and buy all we needed, the prices would be too high. But doing it all together makes it work. My father always said if you work together, you'll make it. If you don't work together, you won't."
The Maine-inspected meat program's more than $1 million in retail value is shared by slaughterhouses that sell their own meat at retail, and farmers who raise beef, pigs, and lambs, and pay meat plants fees for their slaughtering services.
Bubier Meats in Greene sells its meat in its retail store and to Micucci Grocery Store in Portland. Bubier Meats also processes organic beef from Kelley Brothers Farm in Pittston, which it sells in its farm store.
But retail sales are only part of the equation for Maine's meat processors. Custom butchering, which doesn't require the presence of an inspector, keeps many meat processors busy. That custom work means slaughtering animals for farmers, who sell halves and quarters of beef, pork, or lamb directly to consumers. For many, custom slaughtering brings in a significant chunk of the year's receipts.
Todd Pierce, owner of West Gardiner Beef, says he relies on custom work for 90% of his roughly $500,000 in annual revenue.
Tom Mullen, owner of Nest and Mullen Slaughterhouse in Kennebunk, says his custom business is three times the size of his Maine-inspected business. In the spring, Mullen sells 200 piglets to locals in the community, who typically bring the animals back to Nest and Mullen to be slaughtered in the fall.
In 2007, Mullen's Maine-inspected business processed 11 beef steer and heifers, two bulls, and 20 pigs. Mullen charges customers $30 for the slaughter of a steer, $20 to haul away the waste such as bones, fat and offal, and 50 cents a pound to cut, wrap and freeze the meat, all of which adds up to $300 to $400 an animal. Mullen also wholesales mostly hamburger to local stores such as Carl's Meat Market in Kittery and Cummings Market in West Kennebunk.
Ken's Custom Meat Cutting in Biddeford is owned by Ken Hussey, who says his business is still "90% custom work." Like many others, Hussey's hopes for Maine-inspected meat were high in 2003. "It started a lot slower than we thought," Hussey says.
Tobie Bubier's custom work keeps him busy, and optimistic. "I'm seeing a lot more people raising their own," says Bubier. In 2007, Bubier Meats processed 182 dairy and beef cows, which are used for hamburger. Those animals were worth roughly $150,000 at current hamburger prices, which are almost twice as high as they were three years ago. Bubier Meats also processed 76 steer and heifers, which were worth nearly as much at retail prices.
The lure of local
Bubier Meats, started by Tobie Bubier's grandfather, Clayton Bubier, began as a Maine-inspected plant, but operated as a USDA-inspected plant for years until it resumed state inspections in 2006. "We wanted to keep our business local," Bubier said.
Bubier says both the state and USDA programs are very thorough, but finds benefits with the state's program. "The only difference is the state will work with you," he says. "When the USDA says you need to fix this, and you ask how, they say, 'That's not my problem.'"
Todd Pierce, owner of meat processor West Gardiner Beef, agrees. "The inspectors work with us," he says. "If they happen to see something that we don't see, we clean and trim."
But Pierce adds that the zero-tolerance policy used by both the USDA and Maine "is a touchy, touchy situation. You can look at it and look at it and not see something."
Once you've prepared the carcass, after you have washed it, when the meat is presented for inspection, it must have absolutely no fecal matter, milk, or stomach contents anywhere on it, Tobie Bubier says. (Bubier ran into inspection problems after an inspector last year found dirt on a carcass in Bubier Meats' cooler, which led to a state-issued recall of meat processed in his facility. For more on this, see "After the recall," this page.)
Perry Ells, owner of Ells Farm in Union, praises the state's inspection program. "I would say that Maine inspected is more thorough, more current, than federal [inspections]," she says.
Complying with regulations that are the equivalent of the USDA's, as Maine's program requires despite its limit to in-state sales, is difficult for small processors. "When it's only a two-person operation, the paperwork takes a tremendous amount of time," says Hussey.
But like the other Maine-inspected meat-plant owners, Hussey compliments Maine's inspectors on working to unsnarl the requirements, and help business operators stay in compliance. Ken's Custom processed 18 cattle in 2007 in the Maine-inspected program. "I do that many a week in custom slaughter in the fall, and three or four a week in spring," Hussey says.
Todd Pierce at West Gardiner Beef slaughtered more than 80 lamb and 40 sheep for his customers in 2007. Lamb slaughter fees average $63 each, while beef averages $345 and pig cost roughly $158. Pierce also charges a 10% premium for state inspected meat.
The lamb would have brought in between $16,000 and $24,000 at retail, or roughly $250 and $300 each, according to one of his biggest customers, Perry Ells, who sold many of those lambs herself.
West Gardiner Beef has no retail store, but provides slaughtering services for farmers who want to sell meat at farmers' markets, and others like Ells who wholesale their meat to restaurants. Lamb is hung for seven days and then cut, wrapped, and delivered by Ells to upscale restaurants including Primo in Rockland and Francine Bistro in Camden. She also milks a dairy herd and sells the milk to Appleton Creamery. "The way to stay alive in agriculture in Maine is to diversify," Ells says.
Ells depends on income from the sale of her sheep dairy's milk and her flock's wool, as well as the sale of meat, to sustain her farm. She says other farmers with community supported agriculture programs, or CSAs, are now more likely to offer pork or lamb than they were 10 years ago because it adds to their profits. Pigs, for example, can eat the spoiled vegetables and then fetch a high price ˆ and offer a good profit ˆ when they're sold at the end of the summer.
Meanwhile, local livestock farmers are seeing growing interest in their products, in part because of the news reports of massive beef recalls. "The more bad press about meat out there, the more we sell," says Dixie Harris, who with her family runs Harris Farm and its farm store in Dayton, and is one of Ken Hussey's customers.
One transplant to Maine from New Jersey has found a way of life that agrees with him. Bill Garey in Mars Hills owns Garey's Custom Slaughterhouse, which sells frozen beef cuts at the rate of about one steer a month. He has done custom slaughtering for northern Mainers since 1989, including many deer, and started with the Maine meat inspection program in 2003. But his grandfather worked as a meat cutter in a big USDA facility in New Jersey.
Garey's small Mars Hill business employs Garey, his wife Patty Garey, and Mike Robinson, who helps with the slaughtering. "You take more pride in your work when it's small," Garey says. The inspector comes to his business once or twice a month. Even though his retail business is so small ˆ last year his Maine inspected meat came from just 10 steer and heifers, and 17 pigs ˆ he says he has loyal customers. "They feel safer buying farm-raised," he says.
Beef, pork and lamb sold from these small businesses arrive from nearby farms or from barns and sheds just steps away. The feed and hay the animals eat often comes from the neighboring fields. And the money from processing that meat ˆ and, for some entrepreneurs, selling that meat in their own farm stores ˆ goes right into these Mainers' pockets.
That was the thinking behind a meat inspection program launched by the state in 2003. "The program was started to give local producers access to markets and to give people access to local meat," says Dr. Henrietta Beaufait, the state veterinarian in charge of the Maine meat inspection program, which allows meat to be sold in retail shops in the state. (The federal farm bill, which was locked in Congressional negotiations as this issue of Mainebiz went to press, includes a provision to allow state-inspected meat to be sold across state lines.)
While the number of U.S. Department of Agriculture meat plants before 2003 varied, finding one nearby that had time to process one or two animals at a time was a challenge. Creating more slaughterhouses for small farmers was the point of the state program. Custom meat plants have been inspected by the state since 2003, and were earlier inspected by the USDA. No inspectors are required to be present at the time of slaughter at these plants, which do not have the ability to provide meat for the retail market, in state or out.
The people tending to the animals that come through the Maine meat program, most from families that have been doing this work for generations, are poised to reap new rewards from customers growing ever more distrustful of the industrial version of their main course.
"There was a jump [in demand] in 2004 because of mad cow disease, and another now because of the recalls," says Beaufait, referring to the massive recall that involved 143 million pounds of meat from at the Hallmark/Westland Meat packing Plant in Chino, Calif., in February.
Maine-inspected meat processors slaughtered 372 steers and heifers in 2007, compared to 296 between October 2004 and September 2005, the period Beaufait studied before presenting the program to the Legislature in the fall of 2005. "It's growing a little bit at a time, and that's the way it should grow," she says.
Maine's slaughterhouses have a tough time surviving, and many augment their income from slaughter fees by selling meat themselves, either in a farm store or wholesale at local markets. Some raise their own cattle, and others buy beef from farms they trust to sell to their customers.
Local meat processors also tout their products' taste compared to the cuts of meat shipped here from enormous Midwestern feedlots and slaughtering plants. Barry Higgins, who grows hay and runs a slaughterhouse at Maple Lane Farms in Charleston, 20 miles north of Bangor, bemoans the product that gets shipped into Maine from the Midwest. At Maple Lane Farms, the newest business in the Maine inspection program, Higgins ages his sides of beef for 14 days, and says the meat has a fabulous flavor ˆ unlike the prime rib he recently ate at a Bangor restaurant. "There just wasn't any flavor. I'd just as soon eat a snowball," Higgins says.
Hands-on work
Pigs are a large part of the slaughter business at L.P. Bisson and Sons, where more than 450 were slaughtered in 2007. The Topsham processor sold some of the meat to customers organizing special events like a Bosnian New Year celebration or a summertime family reunion.
But L.P. Bisson also sells bacon, sausages and ham in a family-owned retail store where Bisson brothers Andy, Arthur and Bob and their sister, Priscille Pollock, work, along with a number of other family members. The ham is smoked and cured on site, and Arthur Bisson says the company's bratwurst recipe is the same as was made by their father. "Everything we do is hands-on," he says.
The economics of the slaughterhouse industry are difficult to pin down. Most sources interviewed for this story declined to discuss revenue figures.
L.P. Bisson processes the most animals of the processors in the Maine-inspected meat program and adds to its income with a busy farm store and a dairy herd. Those businesses bring in roughly $1 million a year, according to Andy Bisson.
Bisson says the diversity of his farm's operations, including the slaughterhouse, make it succeed. "We couldn't just farm, because there's not enough money in farming," he says. "To run the store and buy all we needed, the prices would be too high. But doing it all together makes it work. My father always said if you work together, you'll make it. If you don't work together, you won't."
The Maine-inspected meat program's more than $1 million in retail value is shared by slaughterhouses that sell their own meat at retail, and farmers who raise beef, pigs, and lambs, and pay meat plants fees for their slaughtering services.
Bubier Meats in Greene sells its meat in its retail store and to Micucci Grocery Store in Portland. Bubier Meats also processes organic beef from Kelley Brothers Farm in Pittston, which it sells in its farm store.
But retail sales are only part of the equation for Maine's meat processors. Custom butchering, which doesn't require the presence of an inspector, keeps many meat processors busy. That custom work means slaughtering animals for farmers, who sell halves and quarters of beef, pork, or lamb directly to consumers. For many, custom slaughtering brings in a significant chunk of the year's receipts.
Todd Pierce, owner of West Gardiner Beef, says he relies on custom work for 90% of his roughly $500,000 in annual revenue.
Tom Mullen, owner of Nest and Mullen Slaughterhouse in Kennebunk, says his custom business is three times the size of his Maine-inspected business. In the spring, Mullen sells 200 piglets to locals in the community, who typically bring the animals back to Nest and Mullen to be slaughtered in the fall.
In 2007, Mullen's Maine-inspected business processed 11 beef steer and heifers, two bulls, and 20 pigs. Mullen charges customers $30 for the slaughter of a steer, $20 to haul away the waste such as bones, fat and offal, and 50 cents a pound to cut, wrap and freeze the meat, all of which adds up to $300 to $400 an animal. Mullen also wholesales mostly hamburger to local stores such as Carl's Meat Market in Kittery and Cummings Market in West Kennebunk.
Ken's Custom Meat Cutting in Biddeford is owned by Ken Hussey, who says his business is still "90% custom work." Like many others, Hussey's hopes for Maine-inspected meat were high in 2003. "It started a lot slower than we thought," Hussey says.
Tobie Bubier's custom work keeps him busy, and optimistic. "I'm seeing a lot more people raising their own," says Bubier. In 2007, Bubier Meats processed 182 dairy and beef cows, which are used for hamburger. Those animals were worth roughly $150,000 at current hamburger prices, which are almost twice as high as they were three years ago. Bubier Meats also processed 76 steer and heifers, which were worth nearly as much at retail prices.
The lure of local
Bubier Meats, started by Tobie Bubier's grandfather, Clayton Bubier, began as a Maine-inspected plant, but operated as a USDA-inspected plant for years until it resumed state inspections in 2006. "We wanted to keep our business local," Bubier said.
Bubier says both the state and USDA programs are very thorough, but finds benefits with the state's program. "The only difference is the state will work with you," he says. "When the USDA says you need to fix this, and you ask how, they say, 'That's not my problem.'"
Todd Pierce, owner of meat processor West Gardiner Beef, agrees. "The inspectors work with us," he says. "If they happen to see something that we don't see, we clean and trim."
But Pierce adds that the zero-tolerance policy used by both the USDA and Maine "is a touchy, touchy situation. You can look at it and look at it and not see something."
Once you've prepared the carcass, after you have washed it, when the meat is presented for inspection, it must have absolutely no fecal matter, milk, or stomach contents anywhere on it, Tobie Bubier says. (Bubier ran into inspection problems after an inspector last year found dirt on a carcass in Bubier Meats' cooler, which led to a state-issued recall of meat processed in his facility. For more on this, see "After the recall," this page.)
Perry Ells, owner of Ells Farm in Union, praises the state's inspection program. "I would say that Maine inspected is more thorough, more current, than federal [inspections]," she says.
Complying with regulations that are the equivalent of the USDA's, as Maine's program requires despite its limit to in-state sales, is difficult for small processors. "When it's only a two-person operation, the paperwork takes a tremendous amount of time," says Hussey.
But like the other Maine-inspected meat-plant owners, Hussey compliments Maine's inspectors on working to unsnarl the requirements, and help business operators stay in compliance. Ken's Custom processed 18 cattle in 2007 in the Maine-inspected program. "I do that many a week in custom slaughter in the fall, and three or four a week in spring," Hussey says.
Todd Pierce at West Gardiner Beef slaughtered more than 80 lamb and 40 sheep for his customers in 2007. Lamb slaughter fees average $63 each, while beef averages $345 and pig cost roughly $158. Pierce also charges a 10% premium for state inspected meat.
The lamb would have brought in between $16,000 and $24,000 at retail, or roughly $250 and $300 each, according to one of his biggest customers, Perry Ells, who sold many of those lambs herself.
West Gardiner Beef has no retail store, but provides slaughtering services for farmers who want to sell meat at farmers' markets, and others like Ells who wholesale their meat to restaurants. Lamb is hung for seven days and then cut, wrapped, and delivered by Ells to upscale restaurants including Primo in Rockland and Francine Bistro in Camden. She also milks a dairy herd and sells the milk to Appleton Creamery. "The way to stay alive in agriculture in Maine is to diversify," Ells says.
Ells depends on income from the sale of her sheep dairy's milk and her flock's wool, as well as the sale of meat, to sustain her farm. She says other farmers with community supported agriculture programs, or CSAs, are now more likely to offer pork or lamb than they were 10 years ago because it adds to their profits. Pigs, for example, can eat the spoiled vegetables and then fetch a high price ˆ and offer a good profit ˆ when they're sold at the end of the summer.
Meanwhile, local livestock farmers are seeing growing interest in their products, in part because of the news reports of massive beef recalls. "The more bad press about meat out there, the more we sell," says Dixie Harris, who with her family runs Harris Farm and its farm store in Dayton, and is one of Ken Hussey's customers.
One transplant to Maine from New Jersey has found a way of life that agrees with him. Bill Garey in Mars Hills owns Garey's Custom Slaughterhouse, which sells frozen beef cuts at the rate of about one steer a month. He has done custom slaughtering for northern Mainers since 1989, including many deer, and started with the Maine meat inspection program in 2003. But his grandfather worked as a meat cutter in a big USDA facility in New Jersey.
Garey's small Mars Hill business employs Garey, his wife Patty Garey, and Mike Robinson, who helps with the slaughtering. "You take more pride in your work when it's small," Garey says. The inspector comes to his business once or twice a month. Even though his retail business is so small ˆ last year his Maine inspected meat came from just 10 steer and heifers, and 17 pigs ˆ he says he has loyal customers. "They feel safer buying farm-raised," he says.
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