When Kathryn Thomas wanted to turn her sheep into lamb chops, the federal government required her to haul them across Puget Sound on a ferry and then drive three hours to reach a suitable slaughterhouse.

Not anymore. These days, the slaughterhouse — and the feds — come to her.

A 53-foot tractor trailer rattles up to her farm on Lopez Island, the rear doors open, and the sheep are led inside, where the butcher and federal meat inspector are waiting. When the job is done, the team heads out to the next farm.

The slaughtermobile — a stainless steel industrial facility on wheels — is catching on across the country, filling a desperate need in a burgeoning movement to bring people closer to their food. It is also perhaps one of the most visible symbols of a subtle transformation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, long criticized for promoting big agribusiness.

Under the Obama administration and the 2008 farm bill passed by Congress, the USDA is shifting attention to small and midsize farms, encouraging organic and sustainable agriculture and investing in projects to bring locally grown meat and produce to consumers.

“There is unbelievable consumer interest in local agriculture that we haven’t seen in decades,” said Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan.

She is overseeing the agency’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” program, designed to revive the processing, marketing and distribution networks that once made small farming viable but disintegrated in the last 30 years as U.S. agriculture went through a consolidation.

Along with midsize and small farms, the number of federally inspected slaughterhouses has been dropping, from 1,627 in 1980 to 1,051 in 2010, according to USDA. Today, four corporations slaughter 80 percent of the cattle in the United States.

In Wyoming, for example, where cattle ranching is so iconic that license plates carry an image of a cowboy, there is no longer a single slaughterhouse inspected by either the federal or state government. Ranchers ship cattle across state lines to megaprocessors, where cows are usually fattened on grain and fed antibiotics before being slaughtered in facilities that process up to 3,000 animals a day.

“There are farming operations that are really big and do huge volumes of food and that’s part of American agriculture and that’s good,” Merrigan said. “But there are a lot of people who want to do alternative markets and we want to find a way to help them find a living and stay in rural America and help those towns and villages thrive.”

The agency is promoting small meat producers in part by funding and approving more mobile slaughter units, staffing each one with a federal inspector, educating farmers and USDA employees about the units and setting clear guidelines for farmers who want to build one. In December, the department set up a toll-free help line dedicated to small producers.

The change coincides with a backlash against factory farms, fueled by concerns about animal welfare, impact on the environment and quality of meat.

 

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