A bill passed during the special session could help the state's farmers while also sending fewer livestock to the Midwest for slaughter
Food and meat processing plants are among workplaces seeing the greatest concentration of COVID-19 cases, both nationally and in Oregon, where an outbreak at Pacific Seafood on the coast led to more than 150 positive tests.
Why meat-processing plants in particular garner such large caseloads is not certain, but cold conditions and the close vicinity of workers preparing carcasses at high speeds could be factors.
With the pandemic comes a renewed focus on meat processing plants, which have long been known to utilize low-paid immigrant laborers working under what are often extremely dangerous and grueling conditions.
A report released by the CDC last week shows that from April to May, more than 17,000 coronavirus cases and 91 deaths have occurred at meat and poultry processing plants across hundreds of facilities in the states that provided data. Among cases with race and ethnicity reported, nearly 90% were diagnosed among racial and ethnic minorities working the plants.
At Tyson Foods, the country’s second-largest meat processing company, at least 8,500 coronavirus cases have been diagnosed nationwide at different plants. In a letter published this month, over a hundred organizations called on Tyson’s major investors to demand safer working conditions and better rights for laborers due to the outbreak.
“They just became these very sad outbreak zones, basically. You had tons of workers getting sick. You had violations left, right and center. So a lot of them were shut down or did have to slow capacity,” said Amy Wong, policy director at Friends of Family Farmers in Oregon, a nonprofit that advocates for small and midsize farms in the state.
New issues with production in the meatpacking industry as it grapples with the pandemic have added to an already increasing demand for locally produced meat. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s federal inspection process makes it difficult for smaller local ranchers to process their own products.
A bill just passed during the emergency session of the Oregon Legislature, however, could help to eventually increase the availability of locally produced meat in Oregon. Farmers also hope it might also reduce the undeniable influence of some of the nation’s biggest meat processors.
House Bill 4206 allows the Oregon Department of Agriculture to run a statewide meat inspection program that’s on par with the USDA’s federal inspection process.
It would involve upgrading non-USDA-certified slaughter and processing facilities to federal standards and eventually increase the availability of meat processing in a state where most livestock are shipped to the Midwest for slaughter at larger facilities.
Out-of-state swine clogged up Oregon’s USDA processing facilities
President Donald Trump deemed the meatpacking industry essential per executive order in April, but closures and reduced staffing at larger facilities left farmers with nowhere to take their livestock for processing in April and May.
Some turned to more localized processors in their states, bolstered with pandemic assistance dollars in places like Minnesota and North Dakota. Still, others were and still are forced to euthanize their livestock, particularly pigs, as long waitlists cause them to grow beyond the maximum weight for most processors.
The largest pig culling effort in the U.S. — possibly tolling in the millions — took place this spring, and pigs will continue to be euthanized and, at times, processed through wood chippers to become compost due to the meat processing “bottleneck.”
And while Oregon’s swine industry is relatively small, the problem found its way to the Pacific Northwest.
In late May, the Oregon Department of Agriculture published a warning about the possible illegal importation of Midwestern swine. Reportedly, swaths of out-of-state pigs filled up local USDA processing facilities, leaving Oregon farmers with canceled processing appointments and monthslong delays.
“We are seeing truckloads of swine beginning to show up for sale on Facebook, Craigslist and other venues,” state veterinarian Brad LeaMaster said in the Department of Agriculture’s statement. “Our concern is that not all sellers are following Oregon’s animal importation laws. These are hogs we cannot track, and that leads to serious concerns about this new swine population, which could carry diseases that don’t exist in the state. An unknown outbreak could wipe out our swine industry.”
The Oregon Department of Agriculture said it was uncertain just how many illegally imported swine came to Oregon, but in mid-May, the Washington Department of Agriculture estimated that 4,000 hogs were imported into Washington state since March — some to “backyard” or inexperienced farmers.
“It really hurt our small producers,” said Susan Richman, owner of Belle Mare Farms in Willamina. “There were a bunch of small producers who had anywhere from one to two cows to 30 cows and same with pigs. And yet suddenly, their butcher had canceled their appointment. Even if they made it well in advance.”
Richman grows cereal and bread grains and utilizes rotational grazing with her small herd of cows. She said her own slaughter appointment for a cow, scheduled for November at Revel Meats in Canby, may have to be pushed to 2021.
But, she said, it’s not so much of a problem for slow-growing grass-fed cows like hers as it is for livestock like swine.
House Bill 4206, will, for the first time since the 1970s, authorize a state-run program of inspection for processing and selling meat from “amenable species,” which includes cows, sheep and pigs.
The program could cost more than $300,000 this biennium and more than $890,000 in the next biennium, according to the fiscal impact statement for the legislation. If the USDA approves the program, federal funding should take care of 50% of the cost.
But some worry the price is too high to see real action. Wong, the Friends of Family Farmers policy director, expressed concern over where the program would find its funding in the midst of a looming post-pandemic recession. She said the legislation was “just the very beginning first step” in re-localizing the state’s meat processing industry.
“The passage of this bill still will require considerable additional, either legislative or agency, steps to really make sure that this program actually is successful,” she said. “A big problem … is that there are a lot of custom-exempt or smaller meat processors in Oregon, but in order to get them up to USDA standards will take considerable resources.”
The bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. David Brock Smith (R-Port Orford) has been working on legislation like House Bill 4206 since 2017. During the 2020 regular session, a similar bill passed through most committees before becoming a casualty of the GOP walkout over cap-and-trade legislation in February.
Brock Smith said the slowdown at local USDA facilities and inquiries to the USDA helped propel the bill through the more recent special session. Brock Smith has been talking with Oregon’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, about federal funding for the program during the pandemic.
“If there is another financial package that deals with infrastructure and so forth, that we might be able to carve out a few million to assist these smaller processors to upgrade their facilities to USDA standards,” he said.
Brock Smith said he thinks the funding would be justified in the name of supporting Oregon’s small farmers and ranchers.
“More importantly,” he said, “the residents of Oregon have the ability to buy those local products. Oregon is going to have to put some skin in the game.”
Two acts, one requiring assistance to meat processors for upgrading plants and another that would in some cases permit the in-state commercial sale of custom-slaughtered, or non-USDA certified, meats are currently being tracked at a federal level.
What more slaughter facilities could mean
Farm advocates and agricultural producers believe the bottlenecking, which sparked an absence of meat in grocery stores and increased prices in April and May, along with the high rates of coronavirus cases in large meat processing plants, has consumers making the case for localized meat.
The majority of livestock raised in Oregon gets shipped off to feedlots and processed in other states. In 2017, for instance, beef and veal were the fifth-most-profitable export for Oregon, raking in over $80 million. Nationwide, the majority of meat processing is in the hands of just over a dozen giant companies.
But for the smaller percentage of meat that is processed within Oregon from small farms, it can be challenging to find a USDA-inspected facility. More localized “cut and wrap” or custom-exempt facilities will process meat, but it can’t be sold commercially after that. Although, some farmers sell live animals to one or more buyers, and the buyers can have the animals processed at a custom-exempt facility.
The smaller meat processing facilities can pose challenges for farmers who rely on distributing small portions of beef or pork, for instance, to customers through community supported agriculture, or CSA, boxes.
There are now 13 meat processing facilities in Oregon that are USDA certified, most of them on the west side of the state and far away from coastal and eastern Oregon’s agriculturally productive regions. Farmers and ranchers must use these processors if they wish to sell packaged meat to consumers and restaurants, which often means hours of transporting livestock across county lines.
“I certainly hope that this renewed interest in local food systems and regional food systems continues, but it will take people still deciding to commit those food dollars to those choices. When we’re in a recession, that’s going to be harder for some.”
A lack of funding in the early 1970s killed Oregon’s original state-authorized meat inspection program, around the same time that U.S. demand for beef began to decline and the meatpacking industry started consolidating significantly. Today, just four companies control 80% of the nation’s beef processing.
“Unfortunately, there was this national push towards conglomeration of meat processing,” Wong said. “The older scale of regional slaughter went away and became less and less financially suitable to do so.”
Farmers are optimistic about the prospect of local slaughter facilities increasing the availability of locally raised meat in Oregon grocery stores.
Curtis Martin, who owns Juniper Mountain Land and Cattle in North Powder and is treasurer at the Oregon Beef Council, said he’s hoped for two decades to see the state-authorized program. He believes part of the reason some of the state’s processors are booked out so far has to do with increased demand in local food.
“People are finally realizing that, by gosh, we do need a farmer and a rancher out here,” he said. “The realization of the customer, that they need to have a recognition and appreciation of the producer, is a really great thing to have happen.”
In 2015, a food infrastructure report compiled by EcoTrust estimated that in Multnomah County alone, consumer demand for beef and pork ranged in the tens of millions of pounds.
But it’s likely most of that product is coming from out of state. State hog producers, for instance, were likely meeting less than 1% of state demand for pork products in Oregon, according to the Ecotrust report.
Even if consumer demand for more local and ethically produced meat is rising, questions remain about the sustainable nature of meat products that are locally produced or grass fed.
Affordability remains a factor, as well. Wong said the availability of more processing facilities is unlikely to lower the prices of Oregon-grown meat.
She said conglomerated processed meat comes from a “totally different” and far less expensive system of agriculture.
“Until those industries are held accountable for those externalities, there’s no way we’re going to see a price comparison,” Wong said. “It’s going to be a while. I certainly hope that this renewed interest in local food systems and regional food systems continues, but it will take people still deciding to commit those food dollars to those choices. When we’re in a recession, that’s going to be harder for some.”
Richman, who continues to tend to her cows in Willamina, said their grazing patterns seem to have invited more native plants onto her fields. She hopes for a future with less meat but at a higher quality.
She said she eats roughly 3 ounces of meat a week, just enough to stave off her iron deficiency.
“We just have to shift our idea of proportions and quality,” she said.
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