Slaughter and Processing

We chose to have our facility become a USDA Inspected facility for multiple reasons. It opens up so many doors for us as a facility, adds quality to our retail sales and for our retail customers, and gives more options to our producers.

As a facility, being USDA Inspected means that we have a USDA Inspector on site throughout the process. When an animal arrives at our facility, it is inspected to ensure the animal is healthy and has no issues. They are there to ensure that the animals are treated in a humane way, and that our facility is clean and sanitary throughout the process. During processing, they check paperwork and ensure that we are following our HACCP plans.

What it means for our retail is that we are able to buy local animals and sell the cuts of meat direct to our customers. As a custom facility, any butchering we did had to be for a customer that brought us their meat and took home their meat. The retail options we had all had to come from a wholesaler. Now we can be our own wholesaler, and we can buy the animal, process it through our shop, and sell that in our coolers/freezers. This ensures that our retail customers are able to get the freshest meat around. They can ask, and we can tell them where the meat came from. No more wondering about the source of their food!

For our producers, we are now able to process their meat under inspection, and they can choose to sell that meat by the pound, bundle, steak to whoever they please. As long as it was processed under inspection and has our “bug” (which means our facility stamp), they can sell that meat direct to consumers, grocery stores, or even restaurants if they choose. They no longer have to sell the meat by the “hoof weight” as they do under custom exempt. There are different county and state laws/regulations they need to follow, so if you are a producer who plans to sell your meat, just be sure to check with your local health department to make sure you are meeting any requirements. Something else that we love to do for our USDA customers is put their own logo on their products. It helps them to get their name out there. We can print custom labels in house for a small additional fee in black and white, and we can also help order custom colored labels and colored chub bags with the producers information on them. Be sure and ask about it when booking if you are interested!

We do still offer custom processing of your beef as well! Please be sure to specify whether you want custom or USDA when booking your beef.