Warning: If you are distressed by the concept and/or practice of raising and harvesting animals for meat consumption, please read no further.

Many small farmers in the Palouse raise livestock for meat production and sell directly to the consumer. There are hurdles for the small farmer to be able to sell meat to the consumer.

Federal regulations say that in order to sell individual cuts of meat (chops, steaks or ground), the animal needs to be butchered in a facility with USDA inspection. Federally inspected facilities butchering a small number of animals for a small-scale, sustainable farmer are rare. While a larger farm or cooperation can market individual cuts of meat to be sold at a Farmers’ Market or meat counter; this method of value-added sales is not easily available to the smaller farmer, putting small producers at a distinct marketing disadvantage.

The small producer can only sell live animals, which can then be processed at a custom butchering facility (example: C and L Lockers in Moscow). Custom plants have to meet State health regulations but don’t have a federal veterinary inspector employed there. So while the farmer can’t sell you a package of meat, what they can do is sell you a live animal, schedule and transport the animal to the custom facility to be cut and wrapped according to your needs. In other words, they are selling you a live animal, which they are allowed to do under USDA regulations, and doing you the service of delivering to the processing facility or have the mobile facility come to their place. What you pay is the price per pound for the live weight of the animal and the price for the custom processing. If it is a large animal, then the farmer can find people to split, so you can get, for example, half a hog or a quarter beef.

By choosing the processing facility that is close, the farmers can reduce travel stress on the animals and maintain control over how their animals are treated at all times. This cannot occur when animals get sold through a livestock auction system or are shipped a long distance to a large processing facility.

Consumers are often worried that they don’t have the storage space for a frozen whole, half or quarter. However, people are often surprised how compact the meat is after processing and find that they have more space for it than they think. Alternatively, one could rent a locker in the freezer at a place like C and L Locker, which is an efficient use of energy and allows the purchase or processing of other food items in the season when they are available.

Local farmers will vary in their rearing methods. To be fully certified organic is tough to achieve in the Palouse because we need to feed our animals through the long, unpredictable winter and finding organic feed is expensive and has limited availability. There is no absolute right way to raise livestock; just what is best for a particular farmers on their piece of land with a particular set of animals. The advantage of buying directly from the farmers is that you can know who has raised your meat and why they have made the management decisions they have made. And you know that you are paying  local farmers what is hopefully a livable wage for their efforts.