Marin and Sonoma ranchers are leading a collaborative effort to launch a new mobile slaughter facility, taking matters into their own hands after the only regional slaughterhouse closed its doors to outside producers in January.
The group—called Bay Area Ranchers Co-op, or BAR-C—will tailor the facility to meet their needs, which have been increasingly dire since Marin Sun Farms ceased serving their labels at its Petaluma facility. To use one of California’s few other slaughterhouses, many ranchers are driving hundreds of miles on a regular basis and face a host of other logistical challenges.
Pioneering a cooperative model, 16 founding members with representation across the Bay Area formed the organization this summer, after finding at least 80 producers interested in using a mobile facility. Their vision is for the unit to operate at cost, returning profits at the end of the year to all its members. Producers can keep their own brands, and no operation will be turned away for being too small. They plan to start operating next spring.
“This was a process of self-determination,” said Vince Trotter, the sustainable agriculture coordinator for Marin’s cooperative extension of the University of California, which is among the local agencies that supported the effort. “This is not the first time in this region when we have recognized that we don’t have the processors we need to support a viable ranching industry. In this case, the ranchers themselves crunched the numbers, made the phone calls, did the research. That makes this effort unique, and has made it successful so far.”
Fundraising is well underway thanks to seed contributions from the cooperative’s founders. The $400,000 already raised will meet the cost of building a custom 40-foot trailer, and the group hopes to raise close to $1 million more to cover necessary infrastructure, including a set of corrals, an unloading area and a concrete slab to meet the U.S.D.A.’s hefty list of requirements. Some of that funding will also go toward hiring up to 15 full-time employees, who will operate the unit year-around.
The facility will likely be based out of one or two primary sites. Sonoma was deemed the best county, considering the geographic distribution of interested ranchers. The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has indicated that it may help secure a good location.
Mr. Trotter explained the benefits of mobility. “There is a lower cost of entry,” he said. “A prefabricated unit is less expensive to build. The impact on any given location is also minimized because it isn’t there all the time. It can carry the water it needs on board, and can carry out the wastewater generated, and there’s much smaller footprint on the land. They are generally allowed in places that a brick-and-mortar plant might not be, from both a land use perspective and a community perspective.”
Several years ago, Mr. Trotter was among those who urged the Marin County Board of Supervisors to allow a mobile slaughter unit, and in 2017, the board lifted a ban on slaughterhouses that had been in place since 2003. The county’s new policy maintains a prohibition on brick-and-mortar slaughterhouses but allows for mobile units.
Until this year, Marin ranchers have been able to use the slaughterhouse in Petaluma that Marin Sun Farms purchased in 2014. David Evans, a fourth-generation Point Reyes National Seashore beef rancher who co-owns Marin Sun Farms and Mindful Meats with his wife, Claire Herminjard, bought the slaughterhouse from Rancho Feeding Corporation, which had served the area for nearly a century.
Unlike its larger counterparts in the Central Valley, Rancho Feeding Corporation was small, slaughtering 12,700 animals every six months. Yet the infrastructure was crucial, allowing the family ranches in the area to develop their own brands and niche markets. In the end, the United States Department of Agriculture shut down Rancho after a massive recall of its beef products.
Under Mr. Evans’s ownership, the slaughterhouse became certified organic, verified by the non-G.M.O. project, certified for the Animal Welfare Approved label, and approved for childhood nutrition labeling so it could sell to public schools. But after six years, Mr. Evans made the decision to restrict the scope of the facility to service only the ranchers that sell their products under one of his two labels.
Mr. Evans told the Light last December that he was prompted in part by concerns about the facility’s compliance with the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which holds processing facilities responsible for violations even after a carcass has left its custody.
“There was a lot of emotion in the decision, but we realized we couldn’t sustain the services, whether it was the regulations, the violations, or all that risk,” he commented this week. “We had to work on our product, our facility, because it wasn’t working and the ship was going to sink if we didn’t correct the course.”
Mr. Evans offered his support for the new cooperative. “I think it’s the right solution,” he said.
Kevin Maloney, a fifth-generation rancher from Tomales who operates Fallon Hills Ranch, said he stopped using Marin Sun Farms’ facility almost two years ago, after he saw “the writing on the wall for the way things were going.” Every other week, he drives to Eureka.
Last fall, Mr. Maloney, who will serve as the cooperative’s board president, said ranchers started searching for a remedy. They met with regional agencies and spent the better part of six months investigating what it would take to establish a U.S.D.A. slaughter unit.
They presented their business plan to the ranching community in June, soliciting its founding members.
Cooperative models are rare, with just one other example led by ranchers in Washington State. Mr. Trotter says he hopes BAR-C will provide a viable model for ranchers elsewhere.
“We’ve been in a trend in the food system toward bigger, more consolidated, more low-cost delivery. It’s time to move toward more local control, to community, smaller-scale and potentially more resilient systems,” he said.
Until now, ranchers in the region have been fortunate to have the option of the Petaluma slaughterhouse. Nationwide, four corporations slaughter 80 percent of the cattle, while six companies control the majority of the global meat industry. The dynamics in California are relatively forgiving, with 20-some slaughter facilities approved by the U.S.D.A
The pandemic has underscored the need for local infrastructure, not only as the biggest companies fail but also as demand for local products increases, Mr. Trotter said.
Adam Parks, the BAR-C board vice president, co-owns Victorian Farmstead Meat Company and operates a butcher shop in Sebastopol. Demand for the company’s products, sourced by eight ranchers in the immediate area, has doubled since March. The current processing dilemma is making increased production difficult and placing greater burdens on his producers.
Driving sucks up time, adds to carbon emissions, and puts strain on the animals, Mr. Parks said. In addition, scheduling sometimes is done months in advance and is not flexible enough to meet the needs of the smallest producers.
Increased support for small ranchers who implement best practices for their animals is necessary now more than ever, Mr. Parks said. “We’re in a really unique time right now, where people are much more in tune with locally raised meat. It’s great and it’s exciting, but it’s also a lot of responsibility. Our customers count on us to provide the best-quality protein that their family can eat, and that’s a level of responsibility we all take very seriously,” he said.
Although the decision by Marin Sun Farms served as the impetus for the cooperative, Corey Goodman, a biotech venture capitalist and the lead investor for the cooperative, said the need preceded it. Mr. Goodman and his wife, Marcia Barinaga, own a ranch in Marshall, and are among the cooperative’s founding members.
“Every one of the local ranches along the coast faces the same problem,” Mr. Goodman said. “They care very deeply about how their animals are raised and about where they are going, the kind of food they are producing, but none of them at the moment have control over how their animals are slaughtered.”