The Meating Place is a butcher shop and cafe located in Hillsboro. It recently received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to expand its meat processing capabilities.
In 2022, the shop received a grant from the Oregon Department of Agriculture as part of a state meat inspection program. Processing meat in Oregon can help producers save time and money. The Meating Place will use the latest round of federal funding to ramp up those services.
We check in with Casey Miller, the owner of The Meating Place to learn more about meat processing and what this means for Oregon’s economy.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to a new model for animal butchering and processing in Oregon: a meat inspection program at the state level. The Meating Place in Hillsboro is the first such facility in Oregon. It just received a federal grant to expand its operations. Casey Miller is the owner of The Meating Place. He joins us now to talk about the future of local meat production. It’s great to have you on the show.
Casey Miller: Thanks, Dave.
D. Miller: You started your business in 2011, doing what’s called “custom exempt processing.” What does that mean?
C. Miller: Yeah, that’s correct. Custom exempt processing is a way for smaller meat producers to get their animals to customers without going to the expense of inspected processing, USDA inspected slaughterhouses, and inspected slaughtering. So we run a mobile harvest unit where we harvest local farmers’ animals, and they’re allowed to sell those to people they know, but it has to be clearly labeled, “not inspected, not for sale” so it can’t get into the retail distribution.
D. Miller: So if somebody, say, buys a quarter cow, or goes in for some portion of a cow, that’s the custom processing that you’re talking about? It’s their animal, and you could butcher it and package it for them, they could put it in their chest freezer, but it couldn’t end up at Safeway or New Seasons, or at a restaurant even?
C. Miller: That’s exactly right. This is an exemption that the USA allows for farmers to get meat mostly to friends and family and themselves, where we would be the service provider of harvesting that animal, processing it, getting it wrapped for the freezer, and yes, a quarter or half of beef going into somebody’s freezer that they’re allowed to consume themselves. But it has to be clearly marked “not inspected, not for sale” so it can’t get into the distribution.
D. Miller: So that’s how you started your business. How is that going? It’s been 13 years now.
C. Miller: That’s grown a ton. We’re one of the largest custom processors in the state. We’re extremely busy doing that. But we really wanted to branch out and find new ways to get local meat producers’ product out to Oregon consumers.
D. Miller: How big a market is there for the size of operation that you’re talking about?
C. Miller: Yeah. There is a big market for the size of processing operations. The problem is there’s only 13 USDA slaughter facilities in the state, which makes it very difficult for small to medium sized Oregon meat producers to get their product to inspected processing and get it to Oregon consumers.
D. Miller: What is an inspected process? What’s entailed?
C. Miller: So basically, all of our systems are verified by the state. We have to have plans that ensure that we’re safe handling the animals, that we’re meeting all the food safety requirements. All temperatures are being recorded, E. coli testing is being done, and having steps to prove that that meat is safe to be in the food chain.
D. Miller: You’re talking about at the state level, but that’s a pretty new thing, right? What about the USDA, at the federal level?
C. Miller: So basically, the state operation is following USDA guidelines. So we have to follow all USDA guidelines under the ODA processing. The difference is we’re working directly with the state to get us up and running, instead of the giant bureaucracy of the USDA, which can be very hard to navigate, and it’s more designed for the massive meat processors.
D. Miller: When you say massive, can you give us a sense for the scale of one of those operations compared to, say, what you’re doing now?
C. Miller: It’s what they call the big four, so Tyson, Cargill, JBS, those type of slaughter facilities, will slaughter up to 400 beef an hour. Thousands a day. So huge operations, huge factory lines. We would be doing like 10 to 15 beef a day.
D. Miller: So why did you want to expand into this operation? You said business was good in terms of the custom side. It does seem like on some level a lot more of a headache to go through the fully inspected processing world. Why expand?
C. Miller: It actually started COVID. When COVID hit, the slaughterhouses were one of the first ones to get wiped out from COVID, because they kept all those workers in the factories. And during that time, there was a big meat shortage right after COVID. When the big box stores were unable to get meat because of the slowdown at the slaughterhouses, we were actually able to bring in those carcasses that they couldn’t produce. And because of the way our facility [was] set up, we were able to cut those whole carcasses, get them to the customers when there was a huge meat shortage around the state.
And that kind of gave us the idea of maybe there’s a better way to get Oregon meat to Oregon customers, because the Meating Place has always strived to get the most local proteins that we can. And after COVID, we looked at it and decided maybe we can bypass these huge slaughterhouses, and we can find ways to get local product to us and to the consumer in a way that actually turns out to be much better for the environment, because we’re cutting out a lot of the transportation steps, and all the packaging that happens at the major slaughterhouses.
D. Miller: Let’s say that there were some head of cattle that were raised for most of their lives in Oregon. If you were an Oregon consumer who liked the idea of adding meat to the list of locally produced products that you consume, what options did you have?
C. Miller: There’s a lot of steps. Basically, you got to get to one of those huge slaughterhouses. So even though you’re growing an animal locally, maybe in our community that we want to get back to our community, it needs to be transported to one of the slaughterhouses that could be hundreds of miles away, processed there, put into package, trucked back to distribution centers so it can get distributed across the city, where most of that goes to a grocery store where it’s opened up, taken out of that plastic, put in a Styrofoam tray for the consumers to get.
D. Miller: At that point, would it still be labeled Oregon? How would, after it goes to a gigantic factory that processes thousands of animals a day, that that’s an Oregon cow?
C. Miller: That was one of the big things that Oregon brought up with the inspection program, that the local beef had to go through so many steps to get to an Oregon consumer that we need to consolidate that. It’s still tracked as Oregon grown, but it goes through a lot of steps just to get to your local farmers market or your local restaurant that’s advertising locally raised beef.
D. Miller: So this is a quarter of a million dollars, this latest grant, after some earlier ones you’ve got at the state level. What’s it going to let you do it in terms of those expansions?
C. Miller: It’s going to allow us to buy the very expensive equipment that we need to package for wholesale distribution, equipment that can package and label, for other producers to get their labels and their names on the product, and allow us to be the local processor that can harvest the animal, process the animal, and then get the meat to local restaurants, grocery stores, farmers markets, without having to go through all the hoops of getting to a massive USDA plant.
D. Miller: So the model is: producers would bring their livestock straight to you?
C. Miller: To our slaughterhouse, which is at our farm, because we produce our own beef and slaughter our own beef, 14 miles from our shop. We slaughter it at our slaughterhouse, that’s in Banks, and then it’s transported under refrigeration to our Hillsboro location, where we would do the processing and have it ready and inspected and ready to send out to Oregon consumers.
D. Miller: And from there, it would go directly to a supermarket or to a restaurant? Or there’s another middleman?
C. Miller: The farmer or the meat producer can do whatever they want with it. If they want their products in restaurants, they can deliver it from us, now that it’s been inspected, processed. It can go to local grocery stores, go to farmers markets. You can get out into the food chain for Oregon consumers to get their hands on it, without having to go to these massive USDA processing plants.
D. Miller: One of the arguments that you were making is that this is a lower carbon footprint in terms of transportation. Instead of going to, say, Idaho, and then to some distribution center, and then back to some supermarket in the Willamette Valley, there’s less trucking. What’s the average radius for your meat producing customers?
C. Miller: My meat producing customers right now don’t have to go very far because of the custom exempt that we’ve been doing. But the ones will be taking on under this inspected processing, a lot of them are driving to Idaho or driving to Eastern Washington, any place that they can find to get USDA processing, because it’s so limited, the plants that are doing it are so busy and congested. The small farmer really doesn’t have much opportunity to get into these big plants.
D. Miller: That’s where they’re going now. But where are they based?
C. Miller: Well, they’re based all over the state. We’re really targeting Willamette Valley growers, so we can keep a nice, consolidated supply line, where they can bring their animals directly to our farm and our slaughterhouse and be processed right in Hillsboro, and hopefully get right out in front of the consumers in the Portland metro area, to limit the transportation of all the meat.
D. Miller: Does the difference in the scale that we were talking about earlier – the difference between just a gigantic slaughterhouse factory and a much smaller operation – mean that even if you set aside the differences in the way the cattle are raised or finished, that your process is just going to be more expensive?
C. Miller: It doesn’t have to be more expensive. We’re trying to cut the cost on that, and that’s part of what this USDA grant is. To get the equipment to be able to do this type of production is very, very expensive. Meat production and all food production equipment in general is very, very expensive.
D. Miller: Because it’s so specialized?
C. Miller: Right, it’s doing such a specific thing. The big factories, like Cargill, they can cut the cost by the volume they do, where we’re doing a much smaller volume. It’s a very expensive thing to start up. But we’re trying to keep our cost in line with anything else at a USDA processing plant, so that consumers have an option that’s based on a price point that they can still get their product to the market at a fair value.
D. Miller: Is most of this meat going to be some version of sort of premium or fancy meat? There are different labels I know you can put on. But are we talking about, in general, high end, more expensive pieces of meat?
C. Miller: The thing we’re expanding into is individual meat producers’ meat. So it’s whatever those small to medium sized meat producers are trying to do.
D. Miller: As opposed to the commodity world.
C. Miller: As opposed to the commodity world. Typically, smaller ranchers and meat producers have a higher quality product, a more specialized thing instead of just sending the beef to a feedlot that’s going into the commodity market.
D. Miller: So this is not going to be ground chuck at $1.99, this is going to be some kind of steak that’ll sell for $28 a pound or something.
C. Miller: That’s what we specialize in now, and that’s what we want to continue to specialize in, is high quality, Oregon meat production.
D. Miller: How big a market is there right now? I know that Oregon, it’s not insignificant when it comes to beef production. But it’s not like California, or other midwestern or western states. How big is your market?
C. Miller: The market is quite big. There are so few USDA processors in the state that there’s a lot of these medium to small sized meat producers that can’t get their product into the USDA processing facility. So we expect to fill up quite fast and be at our capacity relatively quickly, once we get our inspected processing open and running.
D. Miller: What about competitors? Now that this option is available at the state level, a state inspector as opposed to a federal inspector, are there any other state licensed processing plants that are already in operation?
C. Miller: They’re coming online right now. The Oregon Department of Agriculture just rolled out their Oregon meat processing program last year. We are just the first ones to get up and running with the slaughterhouse and production side of things. But there will be more coming online, and there’ll be more in the smaller production side than the giant factory sides that they have the options of now.
D. Miller: Casey Miller, thanks very much.
C. Miller: Thank you.
D. Miller: Casey Miller is the owner of The Meating Place. It is the first state inspected slaughterhouse and processing plant in Oregon, one of a couple that will be joined by more in the coming years. They just received a federal grant to expand their operations.
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