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LOPEZ ISLAND, Wash. -- To have his hogs butchered legally, farmer Bruce Dunlop could haul his animals by ferry and truck 150 miles to the nearest federally sanctioned slaughterhouse.

Instead, he just calls on his friendly roving neighborhood slaughterhouse.

Up rolls a diesel truck pulling an 8-by-12-foot trailer fitted with a sink, a 300-gallon water tank and a cooling locker with carcass hooks. A butcher in a floor-length apron kills, skins, guts and trims the pigs into slabs of meat that are then hung in the cooler and trundled to a packaging plant. Soon the meat is stocked in the freezers of shops on the island and across Washington state and Oregon.

It's not exactly meals on wheels. But Lopez Island's mobile slaughterhouse -- the first to be sanctioned by the U.S. Agriculture Department -- now shuttles from farm to farm three or four days a week, collecting fresh carcasses of cows, pigs and sheep that will become steaks, sausage, bacon and hamburgers. Without the rolling abattoir, says Mr. Dunlop, 53 years old, "we'd be pretty much out of luck."

Federal rules and consolidation of the nation's meatpacking industry have made it increasingly costly and cumbersome for small farmers to bring their animals to slaughter. According to the rules, animals intended to be sold as meat must be killed at a slaughterhouse with a federal inspector present. (Some states allow state inspectors to do the job.)

Lauren Etter/The Wall Street Journal Lopez Island's mobile slaughterhouse parked at Bruce Dunlop's farm.

But the number of plants under federal inspection has dwindled to 808 nationwide, down from 1,750 three decades ago. Today, many farmers and ranchers must travel hundreds of miles or out-of-state for a legal slaughterhouse. Wyoming, for example, has no plants under federal inspection. It has 27 with state inspectors, but under federal law, the meat can't be shipped across state lines.

On this island off the coast of Washington, a group of about 15 farmers decided that, rather than haul animals to a slaughterhouse in Sumner, Wash., they'd bring a slaughterhouse to their animals.

Mr. Dunlop, originally from Montreal, moved to his idyllic, 75-acre farm 12 years ago, fulfilling a lifelong dream. He began making and selling gourmet foods like marionberry syrup and apple-peach chutney.

Lauren Etter/The Wall Street Journal Carcasses hung in the a cooling locker.

He also started raising hogs and sheep. He sold them to neighbors who had them carved by a "custom butcher." Federal law allows a butcher to slaughter an animal without an inspector present so long as the meat isn't offered for sale.

Mr. Dunlop and others on Lopez Island saw an opportunity to supply meat to consumers who've grown more conscious of how and where their food is produced. Farmers' markets and health-food stores have proliferated, nudging organic and locally grown food into the mainstream. Lopez Island restaurants and groceries began offering island-grown fruits and vegetables.

"All of a sudden there's a customer demand and there's farmers to produce it and the infrastructure" wasn't readily available, Mr. Dunlop says.

The farmers discussed building a brick-and-mortar slaughterhouse, but their neighbors stymied that. Then Mr. Dunlop heard about a Texas rancher who slaughtered antelope in a trailer (with state but not federal approval). He headed south to learn about it.

Lauren Etter/ The Wall Street Journal Bruce Dunlop's herd of sheep cross a road.

In 2000, the farmers formed the Island Grown Farmers Cooperative with the help of Lopez Community Land Trust, a nonprofit group dedicated to sustainable agriculture and affordable housing. They designed a prototype mobile slaughterhouse and submitted it for U.S. Agriculture Department approval.

At first, the agency was wary, having never approved such a thing before, says Gregory Sherman, an Agriculture Department supervisor in Everett, Wash., who took part in evaluating the application.

"It was certainly unique," Mr. Sherman says. "But we didn't want to just say, 'Sorry, you can't do this' because it hadn't been done before."

The Agriculture Department approved the unit in 2002 after determining that there was sufficient need and that farmers could dispose of waste through composting.

The cooperative hired two butchers, and the Agriculture Department assigned an inspector who would follow the slaughterhouse around. To pay for butchers and other expenses, the cooperative charges a fee for each animal killed: $105 for a cow, $53 for a pig, $37 for a sheep.

At the crack of dawn one morning recently, the mobile unit pulled up behind a pickup truck at Mr. Dunlop's farm, a lively hollow where goats munched on wild roses and hogs rolled in mud.

Mr. Dunlop rounded up 10 of his 50 hogs. Butcher Dave Soler, a husky 24-year-old in a belt ringed with half a dozen knives and a sharpener, pulled on his apron and knee-high rubber boots. Jim Donaldson, the Agriculture Department inspector, put on a hard hat and lab coat.

Lauren Etter/The Wall Street Journal

From a small straw-lined pen attached to an old barn, Mr. Dunlop guided each animal into a wooden corral. "Here, pig," he cooed at one, shaking a bucket of corn pellets.

In a flash, Mr. Soler stunned the animal with a bolt gun, then cut its throat and hoisted it into the trailer with a winch. He stripped off the hide, and Mr. Donaldson inspected the pig's organs to ensure it was healthy. Within an hour, the hog's carcass was hanging in the locker.

By around 1 p.m., the other nine hogs had been butchered. Mr. Soler took off his blood-soaked apron, climbed into the co-op's white Ford pickup and steered the trailer 50 miles to a packaging plant in Bow, Wash. The meat would be processed, vacuum-packed, labeled and sold in the co-op's retail outlet in Bow. Some products would also be distributed on the island.

At Blossom Grocery, an island health-food store, the freezer is packed with sausage, steaks and other cuts from animals killed in the mobile unit. At the Bay Café, chef and owner Daren Holscher says he features island meat on his menu as often as possible. Still, some of his lamb comes from New Zealand because the supply is more consistent and costs less, he says, even with fuel and shipping costs.

Scott Meyers of Sweet Grass Farm Beef started raising Japanese Wagyu cattle on his grass pasture once the mobile unit was up and running. "It gave me access to the marketplace," he says. "Without that, I wouldn't have even considered" raising beef.

Mr. Meyers says the mobile unit offers his animals a "sublime" death because they avoid the stress of traveling long distances. Such care makes his beef taste better, he says, as he introduces part of his herd: "This one's Violet, here's Splits and Buttercup."

[Via - StartupJournal.Com]

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