A rancher-owned meat harvesting cooperative is slated to open this fall in Havre, Montana, according to a Prairie Star report.
The USDA-inspected Montana Premium Processing Cooperative (MPPC) facility, owned by Montana member ranchers, will initially process 3,000 to 3,500 head of cattle, sheep, hogs and bison a year.
The co-op purchased a building in Havre, Mont., where it will park a semi-trailer that has been modified to be a kill floor.
Matt Rains, a rancher and chief of staff for the Montana Farmers Union, told the publication that cattle producers who have been sending finished steers to a large processing plant out of state started the co-op because they wanted to retail their own beef.
Producers leave $1,500 to $2,000 “on the table” for every steer they sell, and wait times to get into a processing facility can be one to two years, he said.
The facility in Havre is near the end of construction and will open soon. The plant is expected to be a year-round operation that can process cattle, hogs, sheep and bison. MFU said the plant will be USDA certified.
Recently the MPPC and Montana Farmers Union announced that Bill Jones was hired as general manager to run the new operation. Jones has worked at Amsterdam Meat Shop and Feddes Family Meats, where the companies saw strong demand for locally produced and processed meat.
“Bill has been very energetic and really embraces and is excited about the co-op model as a processing facility,” said Rains.
While working as general manager, Jones also plans to partner with Montana State University-Northern (MSUN) to train students in meat cutting and business skills.
“We’re going to be teaching young people how to handle animals in a way that’s calm and respectful,” said Jones. “On a slaughter day, you want to be quiet, calm and move things along carefully, doing a really good job so that everyone maintains quality and integrity throughout.
“We want our people to be careful, safe and take care of those animals all the way through the process.”
Montana Stockgrowers Consider Meat Processing Feasibility
“We’re talking about something that could be a real game-changer for Montana producers,” One Montana Program Manager Matt Bitz enthusiastically told Montana Stockgrowers, meeting at their annual Convention on Saturday, December 13th in Billings.
Bitz spent the past two years overseeing the One Montana research project on the feasibility of building a Montana Meat Processing Plant.
He told them that, based on their research, under the right conditions, a plant in Montana could process 250 head of beef or bison daily. Or a combined 60,000 head of beef and bison annually.
Bitz said One Montana assembled a team of experts across a wide set of disciplines to conduct research in plant design, marketing, wastewater, labor and economic impacts.
They decided to conduct the study after hearing from Montana producers that they wished there was a larger beef processing plant in Montana.
One Montana is a non-partisan, nonprofit organization based out of Bozeman, Montana that seeks to connect rural and urban communities for economic and community development projects.
“Here we are one of the largest beef producing states in the US, we have excellent genetics in our beef herd, but we are still just shipping live cattle out of state for slaughter and processing. We are exporting a raw product,” charged Bitz.
“Beef from Montana is channeled into the national supply chain and essentially becomes anonymous beef on grocery store shelves.”
“Rather than that beef becoming anonymous, One Montana researched the possibilities of processing it here in Montana and selling it as Montana beef.”
Bitz’s presentation on Saturday laid out their findings including promising research on marketing, locations, community impacts and design.
Based on producer feedback, Bitz said they focused their study on the potential of a medium sized, source verified processing plant to succeed in Montana.
Francie M Berg
Author of the Buffalo Tales &Trails blog
