Sometimes, it takes a village to expand a meat processing enterprise.

That was evident recently in the northwestern Colorado town of Craig as Deborah Fitch of Fitch Ranch Artisan Meats guided the mayor, city council members, economic development officials, lenders, and builders through the processing plant she and her husband, Cam, have steadily grown since purchasing it in 2022.

How do lawn mower repair, meat processing and pet product manufacturing all fit together?

Just ask Vernon Beechy of Beechy’s Custom Meats in Shipshewana, Indiana.

On June 17th, Flower Hill Institute's Regional Director of Technical Assistance Chris Roper made a site visit to Barnsdall Meat Processing in Barnsdall, Oklahoma which made him stop and reflect on how fortunate we are after seeing the damage left from two deadly tornadoes that hit the small community within a five week period. 

In March, Flowerhill Institute made a site visit to the Joshua Training Center located in Pike County, Indiana.  This visit was special: it was almost the two-year anniversary of the initial outreach and connection between Flowerhill Institute and the Joshua Training Center. 

Perhaps Kevin Ouzts should be known as The Meat Doctor.

After all, he can cure nearly any type of meat…into mouth-watering slices of prosciutto, bresaola, salami, and more.

Kevin and his wife Megan own and operate The Spotted Trotter Charcuterie, a Production and Retail facility in Edgewood, GA. Kevin works daily to perfect his craft of transforming pork, beef, chicken, and duck into products steeped in old-world tradition but infused with local ingredients, which helped them to coin and trademark the phrase, New American Charcuterie™.   

One of the newest developments in meat processing is a thousand years old.

Field harvesting is steadily growing in popularity as producers and processors alike recognize this method's advantages in terms of humane animal handling and meat quality. For many ranchers, field harvesting is integral to a “one bad day” approach to animal husbandry… providing the animal with a quality, pasture-raised life, followed by one bad day at harvest time.

On an early Sunday morning in mid-June, members of several area Tribes, along with leaders of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), World Wildlife Fund and other organizations gathered around the Intertribal Buffalo Council’s (ITBC) mobile processing trailer at a TNC ranch south of Rapid City, SD to participate in the cultural harvest of a buffalo bull that had been felled by a sharpshooter in the pasture minutes earlier.

If you can’t eat it, wear it.

Or, put it on your skin.

Or, feed it to your companion animals.

That was the message from the most recent Offal Party, hosted by Colorado State University’s Agriculture Innovation Center on January 25th during the National Western Stock Show in Denver.

The evolving humanization of pets creates significant opportunities for smaller meat and poultry processors…if we can create a new supply chain model to connect those processors with pet product brands catering to the demand of today’s “pet parents.”

That’s a high hurdle for many smaller processors who want to market their products into a regional grocery or restaurant chain or capture value for offal ingredients and hides.

Even smaller grocery chains require a relatively high volume of meat and poultry on a year-round basis to keep their cases stocked and their customers happy. That’s simply beyond the capacity of a smaller processor.

But what if…

Smaller meat processing plants across the country are surviving and profiting by producing, and marketing products differentiated from the standard items carried in the typical retail meat case. Grassfed, regenerative, organic, humanely raised, and other claims-verified products are helping these processors stand apart.

Differentiation is key to the success of smaller meat and poultry processors. After all, the big chains can produce generic bricks of ground beef and steaks cheaper than any mom-and-pop processor in the country.

However, a growing segment of consumers want something better than a generic cut of meat. A slew of ongoing consumer studies shows that shoppers increasingly value meat and poultry sourced locally from producers dedicated to environmental stewardship and humane animal husbandry.