USDA processing of meats vs local butchering?

There are two competing methods of delivering meats raised on a farm to the end consumers... through USDA processing, and through local butchering.  Each method has pros and cons, and are fundamentally different in approach, while both bring the same end product to your table. We have struggled with the choice of which method we should use for our primary delivery method. Here I'd like to share our thinking between the two and our decision for now.

How each is done:

Local butchering involves 3 basic steps. The first step is done on farm, without the animal leaving where it lived. This involves kill and basic "cleaning" of the animal to remove uneatable portions. Then the full carcass is transported quickly to the local butchering facility. The second step is called "cut and wrap" where it is cut into usable pieces of meat, sausage, etc. Then for a third step some portions like ham or bacon are sent to a smokehouse to be cured and smoked.  The facilities in the local butcher shop are inspected regularly by the USDA to ensure safe practices but there is not daily supervision.

USDA processing involves 2 steps only, or rather it combines a modified step 1 and step 2. The animals are loaded and  transported live to the processing facility, often hours away from the farm. There they go through a more factory style kill process sometimes involving waiting for periods of time in a holding area. The second step of cut and wrap are similar except that the volumes are much larger so the process is less like an artisan and more like a factory. The last step of cure and smoke is the same, since most USDA facilities do not do their own curing. This entire process up to cure and smoke is supervised by a trained USDA government inspector on premises.

At face value, both methods are similar. Nevertheless, a few differences emerge with some thought.

1. Stress - It is a known fact that stress in the animal immediately before butchering causes changes in the final product. Read this link for a more indepth discussion of stress on meat quality. Considering the two methods, the farm kill and local butchering creates much less stress than USDA processing, because USDA requires that the animals arrive live at the facility. This involves one of hte most stressful events in a farm animals life - loading into an unfamiliar trailer, cramped compared to their wide open pasture lifestyle. They often can not see out of the trailer while transporting, which often takes hours. Imagine spending your life in a open green pasture where you are free to roam and explore with our family and friends, then one day are captured and led into a small trailer with several of your companions. Standing shoulder to shoulder for a few hours you are bounced around in a noisy windy trailer with no food, water, or bathroom facilities. When you arrive there are strangers there herding you into small pens with stranger who have undergone the same process.  Now, does that sound stressful? In contrast, what happens in a farm kill is  the animals are separated into a clean familiar pen, and  when it's time they are "put down" quickly and humanely.
 
So you can see here that, aside from anything else, USDA processing by design requires stress to be introduced in the animals life, thereby lowering the quality of the meat according to Purdue University and every over study I have ever read.

This leaves 2 strikes against USDA processing in our opinion, #1 - it lowers meat quality due to stress and #2 - it is less humane.

2. Safety - One might at first glance think that USDA is safer because "the government inspector is there to ensure everything goes right".  Before we jump to that conclusion, lets consider it closer. The oversight in a local butcher is you as the customer, and your friend the butcher. Who do you inherently trust more... your own instincts and the butcher who is now your friend and neighbor, or the government inspector who you have never met? Personally I lean on the side of trusting myself over a government employee.

Then we look at the process itself... USDA facilities are VERY expansive. Expensive facilities have to be justified through high profit, high volume business practices. High volume requires efficiencies such as in factories. The focus changes from quality to profit.  High volume also introduces more product moving through, which in the case of biological systems brings more chance for infection. If any one animal carries with it bacteria , that bacteria can quickly spread to the others. Ever wonder why a meat based food recall involves thousands or million of pounds of meat? Simply because the more volume there is, the more end product is affected by problems. Contrast this to local butchering where volume is inherently lower, and therefore chance for contamination is also lower.

(rumor warning !) I have not verified this, but have been told  that part of hte USDA process requires decontamination with various chemical at various steps along the processing cycle. If this is true, it leaves two doubts.. it would only be through the more frequent presence of pathogens that decontamination is necessary, and the chemicals used in decontamination are themselves suspect. (end of rumor warning)

A related point is that the very process of transporting and holding the animals in the conditions described above increases the chances for contamination. Simply put the more animals you place in a small space for periods of time, the more pathogens are generated and spread.

Don't get me wrong.. I am not saying that USDA facilities produce dangerous or bad product, I am only suggesting that by the numbers if something went wrong in a USDA facility it would affect hundreds of times more people than if something went wrong in a local butcher shop. I am also suggesting that the chance of contamination is higher in USDA facilities than local butcher shops. I am also suggesting that some people (myself included) give more trust to people  I know and places I have seen than unknown government employees and facilities closed to visiting.

This leaves another strike against USDA processing - the safety factor.

3. locality (the green aspect) - Transporting and shipping takes time, money, and fuel. It is much "greener" to do everything locally than to be transporting and shipping outside the area. The  cost of transporting the live animals must be included in the selling price. It is not practical to place USDA facilities closer to farms because the volume required to turn a profit in USDA facility requires a larger area of farms to service. Again, it's the model itself that is at fault. The bigger things get, the less it is like farming and the more it is like a factory.

So another strike against USDA for the Green factor and cost of transporting.

So WHY DO USDA processing?  There is one really good reason. The law says that only USDA processed meats can be made available through retail sales of individual cuts. Local butchering only allows for selling of live animals, butchered as a separate process. 

4. But, alas, there are pros and cons here too. In the grocery store is is the competition of labels and names. There is no person to explain the benefits of a certain choice. In the end, retail sales is all about "sales" not quality and production.  In order to market a higher quality product effectively it takes money and advertising that a small farm usually can't provide. Down this road of thinking one must ask the question is it beneficial for the small farm to sell  through retail establishments? This sales model lowers the income to the farm through wholesale vs retail sales, and it requires more advertising and brand building cash investment.  This is not the model Little Sprouts wants to use -- so one more strike.

So what is the bottom line?

Little Sprouts have chosen to not use USDA processing for now. In the future we may choose to do some processing USDA to offer in alternative markets, but that is undecided. For now we will continue working on creative ways to offer only the highest quality of meats to the consumer, highest quality of life for our animals, and closest relationships with our end consumers.

A bottom line here is  the value in a mission statement. USDA processing goes against the principles in our mission as a farm, so being true to ourselves, we will avoid it as the primary business model. What is a mission, if it is too easily violated? Something in business must be constant, even in farming, and we believe that we must either abide by our mission statement, or change it. For now, it stands :)