Been hungering for local cuts but finding the choices are rather scant on the meat aisle? That could all change.
Been hungering for local cuts but finding the choices are rather scant on the meat aisle? That could all change.
Construction has been completed on a mobile slaughterhouse geared specifically to the island’s smaller producers. The unit contained in a 36-foot trailer is in Tacoma, Wash., waiting to be shipped, said Mike Amado, president of the Hawaii Island Meat Cooperative.
A new grant of $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will pay to equip and operate the unit, which will be ready to deliver cuts of local beef, pork, lamb and goat in the early part of next year.
Delicious though locally-produced meats may be, they’re scarce. The island imports 83 percent of its beef and 95 percent of the pork, lamb and goat consumed here.
That’s partly due to competition and the high costs of operating on the island, but also partly to a lack of access by local producers to USDA-inspected slaughterhouses.
The island’s first mobile slaughter service will operate at regional bases around the island, increasing access for the island’s small- and medium-sized producers who say they have a hard time getting their meats packaged at two existing facilities due to the travel distance and challenges coordinating their livestock shipments with other — often larger — users of the slaughterhouses.
For example, the Paauilo slaughterhouse processes only beef, Amado said. The increased access via the mobile unit is likely to lead to more animals being raised, he said.
“Probably our biggest demand will be hog processing,” he said. “We do have the capacity to produce all our own pork and probably excess. The hog producers are telling us they’re interested in ramping up hog production if they know we have the processing facilities.”
The three-section trailer contains processing bays and a 14-foot-long cooler, and is capable of processing 16 cattle, 60 sheep and goats or 30 pigs over two days of processing.
The notion of a mobile unit began to gain traction in 2011, and in 2014 a feasibility study found a high demand for the service among the island’s smaller producers, with about 35 of them expressing interest in using the service and a significant number willing to invest their own money in a mobile unit.
A $250,000 grant from the state Department of Agriculture and other sources has acted as seed money to launch the venture, Amado said.
“Once we get it up and running as a profitable business, it will stand on its own,” Amado said.
Initial staffing will be a general manager, head butcher and several regionally-based assistant butchers, Amado said. More assistants will likely be added in the future as the bases for the unit are set up. The mobile slaughter unit could eventually employ up to eight people.
The HIMC will hold tours of the mobile unit and a barbecue and membership drive from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Kona Historical Society in Kealakekua.