When Stan Schutte began the transition from conventional to organic farming nearly ten years ago, he says people treated him like he’d quit the medical profession to become a chiropractor. “My peers looked at me like I was nuts,” he recalls. Now just a year after finally earning certification for the entirety of his 200-acre Triple S Farms in downstate Stewardson, he’s taking on another project some of his neighbors probably think is crazy: frustrated by a shortage of facilities that can process the cattle and hogs that make up the bulk of his business, he’s decided to build himself an organic slaughterhouse.
Meat processing is a major challenge for many small and midsize Illinois farmers–organic or otherwise. Industrialized meat production and an agricultural economy based on corn and soybeans have not only decreased the number of farms raising their own livestock, they’ve diminished the number of slaughtering and butchering facilities that can serve them. Most company processors are almost always closed to farmers not under contract with the owners, meaning the little guy often gets left in the lurch.
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Schutte takes his livestock to Hartrich Meat Processing Plant in Ste. Marie, about 50 miles away; between delivering animals and picking up meat, he estimates he’s there once a week. Only one processor in the state, Scott Bittner’s Eureka Locker, can process certified organic pork and red meat, and Eureka’s 150 miles away. Worse than the additional travel time and fuel costs, the longer drive would stress out his animals–and adrenaline makes for tougher meat.
Most of Illinois’ livestock production is contracted by giant meat packers like Tyson and Smithfield–an estimated 90 percent of its poultry and 80 percent of its hogs. The companies pay local farmers for the labor and space to raise their animals and then collect them when they’re ready for slaughter.
The Central Illinois Poultry Processing Plant in Arthur, run by Andy and Vera Jess, an Amish couple, on diesel generators and natural gas, is the only place in the state certified to turn out organic poultry. Because it is also the only commercial poultry processor downstate, period, many small farms that raise chickens–including Schutte’s–depend on it. But Amish farmers alone bring in plenty of business, and there’s been talk in the past of closing it to outsiders.
If he does quit, Gebhart will have to drive 80 miles to Bittner’s plant in Eureka, which he says is the next closest slaughterhouse that will take him. It’s organically certified (Eggiman isn’t), but Gebhart is still reluctant to do it for the same reasons Schutte is–the additional fuel costs and the added stress on the animals. Things are so touch and go that a few years ago Gebhart himself nearly bought an existing plant in Broadwell, just north of Springfield, but the deal fell through. “Now it’s not a slaughterhouse,” he says. “It’s an RV repair shop.”
As business increased, the Dickmans began processing all their birds at Central Illinois Poultry Processing, a two-hour drive away, and developing new products. They maintained their on-farm exemption too, even though they’d stopped using it. Then in 2005, when they requested product labels for seasoned chicken patties, they were denied. Product labels are required to sell all state-inspected meat or poultry products, and the state Department of Agriculture claimed it rejected the Dickmans’ request for new ones because they might illegally apply them to chicken processed on their farm–even though it had already issued them labels for chicken sausages, which were processed at CIPP too. “They said, ‘If you give up your on-farm exemption, we’ll give you the label,’” JoAnn recalls. “It was an ultimatum.” The Dickmans caved.
