State to weigh slaughterhouse

Brattleboro Reformer
By HOWARD WEISS-TISMAN, Reformer Staff
Friday, January 11
Original Article Here

WESTMINSTER -- A proposed slaughterhouse for Westminster is getting focused attention among other more high profile initiatives in Montpelier as the 2008 Legislative session begins.

As lawmakers return to the Statehouse this week to talk about health care, energy and education funding, the slaughterhouse was discussed Wednesday in a House Agriculture Committee meeting.

"Momentum for this project has been building for a long time and it is a priority for this agency to keep the ball rolling," said Anson Tebbetts, a deputy secretary with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. "Southern Vermont is underserved and we want to move this project along."

The agency is working with area farmers and legislators to possibly open a modern slaughterhouse in southern Vermont within two years, Tebbetts said.

The former Coastal Seafoods building on Back Westminster Road is being eyed as the perfect site for the facility, though other options are being considered.

About 1,800 surveys were sent out to farmers in Vermont, New Hampshire, western Massachusetts and eastern New York. After the data is gathered from those surveys, supporters will put together a business plan to see if it would be viable to start a meat processing center in southern Vermont.

"It's very important because it impacts so many things. We're talking small business. We're talking small farms," said Tebbetts. "Local food is big and we want farmers to be able to take advantage of that. Right now it is very hard to do that in southern Vermont. This is an important project."

There are seven slaughterhouses in Vermont, but Windham County farmers have to travel about 11/2 hours each way to Royalton to deliver their animals, and then the same distance later to pick up the meat.

With an increased focus on local food, and farmers looking for any edge they can find to survive, a southern Vermont slaughterhouse could be a boon to the local agricultural economy, Brattleboro farmer Rebekah Murchison said.

"We are very excited about this possibility for the entire regional farm economy," said Murchison, who is co-owner of Fair Winds Farm. "It could increase our access to local food. Southern Vermont could be more food sustainable than we are."

Murchison said the Westminster site looks very good -- it was originally built as a slaughterhouse and is close to the highway -- but the group is not focusing only that property.

A meeting held last year drew 53 people, and already about 250 surveys have been returned.

The data is incomplete right now, but so far farmers throughout the region seem to support the idea.

"Farmers are saying that if they had access to a good slaughterhouse, they would triple their production. They are holding back their expansion because there is not a good slaughterhouse in the region," Murchison said.

The report to the House Agriculture Committee Wednesday was held to keep lawmakers up to date, but also to start trying to raise the money for the business plan as well as funding the project, Rep. Michael Mrowicki, D-Putney, said.

"There's big bucks getting in the way right now," Mrowicki wrote in an e-mail message from Montpelier. "It seems like it will take about $300,000 to equip the site and it will probably take a mix of state and private funds."

The project will not only help farmers but could spin off other businesses, like a smokehouse and animal hide business, according to Murchison.

And she said right now farmers throughout southern New England can not raise the meat they know there is a market for.

"This is the beginning of a long road and I hope there is a lot of community support for it," she said. "Agriculture is one sector of the economy that can't be outsourced to India or China. It's a sector of the economy that is here to stay."

Anyone seeking information on the Westminster slaughterhouse projection can call Murchison at 802-254-7128.