Hello everyone. Today we would like to discuss a topic that we feel is going to be a much bigger part of the cattle industry soon. Mobile slaughter units. We had never
heard of the idea of a mobile slaughter unit until the last couple of years. Our first exposure to the idea was being done by Broken Arrow Ranch in central Texas for field harvesting deer. Now apply this idea to cattle ranching. There are lots of complaints from cattle ranchers about the fixed meat processing plants, especially for rural ranchers that have to trailer their livestock far distances.
The mobile slaughter units are required to meet the same USDA inspection and regulations as a fixed slaughter facility. Currently, there are 9 FSIS-inspected mobile slaughter units in the United States (1). With the events that have transpired in the cattle industry due to COVID-19 there is an enormous push for more mobile slaughter units. Instead of having a fixed facility having to be used by large numbers of ranchers with millions of pounds of a product being butchered every year, there could be multiple mobile units managing smaller numbers of ranchers. As mentioned, we saw this year what can happen when large fixed plants are forced to shut down. More mobile slaughter units could be a welcome change for the cattle industry with more local access to meat processor units.
What about the cost of these mobile units? Is it cost-effective to incorporate more into the current market? From what we have been reading the cost of a mobile slaughter unit is vastly below that of a fixed facility (2). Which makes sense. Management is much more effective for everyone when smaller groups are being well managed. Everyone benefits from this style of harvesting with better schedules for the ranchers, less stress on the animals, less loss of profit, and better quality meat to the markets. Not many people have the capital to just go out and start a mobile slaughter unit, so how is this idea going to get off the ground? Recently we read about a CO-OP of ranchers that got together to start one (3). We would imagine that we will see more of these styles of CO-Ops forming shortly.
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