by Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

Bigger isn't always better but staying minor has its challenges. Nathan Henderson, founder of Reber Stone Farm Processing Facility in Essex, NY, presented "Logistics of Small Scale Meat Processing Licenses: NYS v-A Poultry Processing, FSIS Custom Exempt Processing" at the recent NOFA-NY conference.

"The intention starting out on this projection was different than what we concluded upwards," Henderson said of his meat processing facility.

His layout was simple: a 18×42-pes edifice that includes a 12×18-foot cooler, an 18×18-foot cutting room and a x×18-pes kill/evisceration room.

"We wanted control over what we practice," Henderson said. "It would exist cheaper if we congenital our own facility. And then everything would exist hunky-dory."

Those lines of thought went into the planning in 2016. The farm was operating its own freezer meat business and Henderson processed in his neighbour'southward deer processing facility. Equally a butcher, Henderson wanted more than control over the process. "Nosotros were passionate near the animal welfare of on-farm slaughter," he added.

He'd heard horror stories nigh slaughterhouses but lacked experience with other processors. He thought that building his own facility would represent a huge cost savings.

Since Henderson had already built a forty×100-foot truss barn and his own family'southward dwelling, he felt well-equipped to build his processing facility. He'd installed and designed utilities and even endemic an excavator. While the timing was not perfect – his married woman was seven months pregnant at the time and he was operating the farm – he plunged forward to build his processing facility.

He hired a flatwork concrete contractor for pouring and surfacing the floor, a refrigeration contractor for the walk-in cooler installation and a dump truck and skid steer contractor for the route stop work. Even with those hires, the toll of labor was only 10% of the total project. He figures that if he had hired someone to build it entirely, labor costs would equal fifty% of the total project toll.

To further reduce costs, Henderson purchased much of his equipment used from sources similar Craigslist and eBay, "which means less money upfront, simply more ongoing maintenance and repair costs plus downtime," Henderson said. He also purchased new refrigeration equipment, three-phase inverter, printer scale and vacuum packaging machine.

The facility was a country-inspected, 5-A poultry facility, which may procedure up to 20,000 birds. The farm as well has a state-inspected xx-C kitchen which can produce value-added processing like bone broth, sausage or rendered fats. The farm may process big animals for sale by whole or halve but not by the cut.

"All those products need to come from a licensed source," Henderson said. "Beef or pork sausage would demand to come from a USDA facility. The regulations are clear as to how you lot sell those animals and that ended up being a limiting factor later."

The 5-A New York State license costs $200 annually and requires a quarterly inspection by a local state inspector. Henderson keeps h2o quality testing, sanitation and processing logs. He as well posts his Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs). For the twenty-C license and inspection, he performs much of the same work as for the 5-A license and pays an additional fee. For his Federal Custom Exempt license, his facility undergoes an annual inspection, and he must keep processing and billing logs. The billing information is regarding customers ownership quarters or processing services.

He'south found that his biggest bottleneck is the freezer space. "I quickly realized that with swell systems, I, as a butcher, tin can only process so much," Henderson said. "In hiring folks to aid me do this, I realized I'm a full-time butcher running a farm business. It made sense to railroad train a full-fourth dimension butcher and then I tin run the farm business organisation. All of a sudden, the processing facility is running on its ain, and then I started treating it equally a business rather than equipment that brought value to the farm."

He also congenital the facility to adjust the seasonal processing of the subcontract's freezer meat and some outside piece of work; however, this was not plenty workflow to go along employees working year-round.

"Labor is ever a tough one," Henderson said. "The original labor solution was that I was going to do everything."

Finding people willing to work September through February was difficult. Past the time he had people working out well in the shop, information technology was time to shut downwardly. Employees seldom returned the subsequent season.

He contemplated if the farm would be better off paying for processing off the farm. "A lot of processing facilities in the area charge about the aforementioned prices," Henderson said. "For the nigh office, the services we were providing were nigh the aforementioned."

His estimated annual payments are $sixteen,000 and the cost of off-subcontract slaughter and processing is $18,000. "Can we justify this investment with and so lilliputian to no net income and only generating $30,000 to $50,000 in revenue?" he posed.

Afterwards four years of trying to make the business concern work, Henderson had withal to generate income from the investment in the meat processing facility. He views the work book and seasonality every bit the major roadblocks.

He began renting the shop to another farmer developing a custom butchering business. He likewise started sending out his beef and pork to a USDA plant in Vermont for more flexibility in outlets.

"Ane of the things we've considered is what would it take to cutting USDA meat under our xx-C licenses … or obtain a USDA license to cut and wrap meat that was killed off-site?" he said. "In that location's a lot more to making this investment work for our business organization than simply having a shop."

Ultimately, it didn't piece of work out for Henderson. He eventually sold the processing concern and returned to total-time dairying.