Oregonians have few options if they want to buy locally-raised cuts of meat from smaller producers. A state program is trying to change that, but advocates and farmers say the Legislature needs to properly fund the program for it to work.
Oregon has invested around $10 million to keep more meat local through a meat inspection program it launched in 2022. But some groups warn the state has not funded staff to properly run the program.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat inspectors and graders at a processing facility. Nov. 29,2018.
Preston Keres / U.S. Department of Agriculture
In 2022, Oregon got the green light from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch a state meat inspection program that would allow smaller, locally-owned slaughterhouses to process and cut meat that could then be sold within the state – so long as it met federal inspection requirements.
That’s because Oregon only has 13 USDA-inspected facilities, but for the most part, they’re at capacity, said Mike Guebert, a livestock farmer and the program director at Oregon Pasture Network – a group that provides resources to pasture-based farms and ranches.
“So if you are a new farmer that wants to raise livestock and get into, let’s say a farmers market or restaurant sales or just selling individual cuts direct to consumers, you might be out of luck,” he said. “Because there may not be any slots open for you, or you may have to wait a very long time and your animals are not getting processed at the optimum time.”
Another alternative would be to sell an animal to a local customer, process it using a mobile slaughter facility at a farm and then take it to a butcher shop that isn’t USDA inspected, Guebert said. But a rancher is not allowed to sell individual cuts of meat if the animal wasn’t slaughtered in a USDA-approved facility.
“They [livestock farmers] may be only limited to selling a whole animal, half animal and they might want to sell it at farmers markets or restaurants or wherever, but they just don’t have the opportunity to do that,” Guebert said.
The Oregon state meat inspection program sets out to fix that problem. With the USDA’s OK, the state Legislature approved $2 million in 2022, followed by a $9 million allocation in 2023 for local processors to purchase new equipment and increase processing capacity.
So far, two facilities are currently inspected under the state program and two more will be joining it in January 2025. The Oregon Department of Agriculture anticipates it will have between 10 to 12 facilities enrolled in the program by the end of 2025, Andrea Cantu-Schomus, a spokesperson for ODA, told OPB.
But there’s a slight hiccup, said Alice Morrison, co-director of Oregon nonprofit Friends of Family Farmers. An inspector must be present to turn the machines on and oversee the slaughter of the animal every time, she said. That’s unlike other food safety programs, where inspections happen on an annual or regular basis.
Even with cross-trained state meat inspectors, ODA does not have enough funding to pay inspectors to work, Morrison said.
“This program needs dedicated staff time because those folks would need to be available on a regular basis to serve these facilities that the state is invested in,” Morrison said. “If we devoted all this money to getting them [meat inspectors] up to speed, we want to make sure that they can operate enough hours every week to make sure that that state investment stays viable.”
As of October, the state’s agriculture department has two inspectors on the payroll, according to Rusty Rock, the director of Food Safety and Animal Health at ODA. During the last legislative session, ODA had requested funding for more hours for the program, although the Legislature did not approve the request, Rock said.
“Their [legislators] logic behind the ‘no’ wasn’t that we don’t want that program to be there. It’s just that it doesn’t make sense to put money into something when there isn’t a need for it yet,” Rock said. “So it’s kind of a chicken and egg situation.”
Rock said if more funding isn’t allocated for inspectors, the agency would have to borrow funds from other programs within the agency.
Now, Morrison said, her group is working to introduce a bill during the upcoming 2025 legislative session to request more funding, up to 80 hours per week to serve the program in the 2025-2027 biennium. The request wouldn’t necessarily translate to more positions, but rather use them to break them up into part-time or seasonal positions, Morrison said.
She said Friends of Family Farmers has received support from legislators and is optimistic it’ll get through the session. Guebert said keeping the state program viable and accessible to local producers will only strengthen Oregon’s food supply.
“A program like this just helps our entire system become more resilient, instead of being reliant on what’s commonly called the big four producers [Tyson, Cargill, Marfrig and JBS] that control about three-quarters of the meat industry,” Guebert said. “And so basically bringing more of that closer to home is nothing but a win for everybody.”