In poultry slaughtering, what goes around comes around

Burlington Free Press
Published: Thursday, January 10, 2008
Ed Shamy
Original Article Here

A brief history of poultry slaughtering in Vermont:

Circa 900 A.D.: Elderly woman, about 27 years of age, clad in deerskin crouches in bushes watching lone grouse scratch at forest floor. Woman bursts from cover, chases grouse down rocky slope, dives atop bird and snaps its neck with flick of her wrist. Tears feathers from grouse breast, dines.

Circa 1950: Farmer tells farm wife he has a taste for that roasted chicken she makes from time to time. Farm wife finishes wringing laundry, hangs last pair of overalls on outdoor line, walks out to farm yard. Farm wife finds stump. Finds axe. Grabs ornery chicken that gives her a hard time every morning while collecting eggs, puts head on stump, drops axe. Plucks. Rinses. Stokes oven with wood. Cooks.

Circa 1975: Hippie from Lower East Side of Manhattan, recently relocated to Vermont commune, tires of diet of nuts, berries, LSD. Daydreams of turkey smothered in gravy. Unsuccessfully chases neighbor's turkey. Neighbor's turkey outwits hippie, escapes. Hippie moves back to New York.

Circa 2003: Poultry farmers find themselves buried beneath a glut of regulations governing slaughtering operations and a shortage of qualified, properly licensed slaughterhouses. Commercial poultry farms in Vermont roughly as common as commercial diamond mines in Lamoille County.

Circa 2007: Poultry eaters in Vermont eat birds most likely raised and processed in Alabama or Arkansas, though the plumpest specimens come from the Carolinas and Delaware. It's a rare bird, indeed, that has ever set live foot on Vermont soil.

2008: The Vermont Agency of Agriculture, flush with cash set aside by the Legislature, begins its search for a private manufacturer willing and able to design and build a mobile slaughterhouse.

As envisioned, the mobile unit will be a trailer that can be hauled around the state to private farms where poultry can be dispatched, dressed and chilled in compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture sanitary regulations and U.S. Department of Transportation safety regulations.

The mobile slaughterhouse is envisioned as -- no pun intended -- a gooseneck trailer that can be towed behind a truck. It will have separate rooms for killing and for cleaning and will have built-in facilities for draining (you-know-what) and storing waste (yeah, that) and scalding (don't ask).

This will cost in the vicinity of $75,000 and will be operated possibly as soon as April under agreement with a private processor.

Think in terms of a bookmobile, but instead of books, it will be chickens. And instead of borrowing them, poultry farmers will be paying to have their birds offed, dressed and prepared for sale under the scrutiny of meat inspectors.

Come to think of it, disregard the bookmobile comparison. It's nothing like a bookmobile.

A solitary mobile slaughterhouse reconnoitering the back roads of rural Vermont will not solve all of the problems facing small producers or dramatically increase the likelihood that you will be eating a Vermont-raised meal this time next year.

Maybe we've strayed too far from the best solution.