The Death of the Local Butcher, Part 1: What is the Problem?

Guest Opinion by Ben Michael of the Russell County Butchery, LLC—Part 1 of 3

With many individuals and families having a renewed interest in knowing where their food comes from, and desiring to return to local food choices, many folks are making the effort to buy locally-sourced meat. The nostalgia of the local butcher, with sausages and hams hanging around the meat counter and fresh steaks from recently processed beef, harkens back to a simpler time in small-town America. These butcher shops were mostly family affairs, relying on local farmers and customers, without the complex food distribution logistics that are taken for granted today. Larger packing plants still existed, but small communities depended on their butcher for animals raised on their small farms and homesteads to provide meat for themselves and the surrounding community. Animals were slaughtered at these local facilities, and the connection between the farmers that raised them and the customers that bought the meat was much closer. Our modern sensibilities have widened the distance between live animals and sanitized, shrink-wrapped meat packages, but many people have increasing concerns about what exactly is in those packages, and how it got there.

According to www.friesla.com, in the late 1960’s, there were nearly 10,000 slaughter facilities in the United states, but that number has dropped to less than 2900 today, and less than 1100 are USDA inspected (based on the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) database). The idea of the small-town butcher shop has been eclipsed by high-speed slaughter facilities and increasingly automated processing and packing plants.

The meat industry has changed significantly in the last 60 years, with the ever-increasing mechanization and commercialization of all agricultural enterprises. Currently, an estimated 85% of all beef processed in the United States is done so by four main companies, Cargill, Tyson, JBS SA, and National Beef Packing Co, with the latter two companies being majority owned by foreign entities. This info is from Reuters, who also claims that these four companies only had a combined market share of 25% in the late 70’s, but that has more than tripled to its current levels. Larger, more automated processing plants allow these companies to slaughter up to 400 head of beef per hour, more than a lot of very small plants would do in an entire year.

Increased processing capabilities have grown in conjunction with the expanded development of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s). These feed lots, as they are most commonly termed, are often located in close proximity to large processing plants to help mitigate the logistics needed to get finished beef to slaughter. Unfortunately, these expansive operations don’t come without problems, including concerns over animal health, environmental impacts, and food safety for consumers. These operations attempt to address these concerns by compliance with regulatory oversight for humane handling, pharmaceutical interventions, environmental impact studies and food safety guidelines, but the real damage has been done to communities that have lost their local abattoir because of these streamlined operations.

Additionally, the ties between the USDA and commercial agriculture cannot be left unnoticed. “Big Ag” is buttressed by subsidized programs for commodity pricing and insurance payouts that are backed by the federal goverment, using tax dollars funneled through the USDA, regularly passed in the Farm Bill. Sometimes, not having a successful crop is more profitable than harvesting and selling by the bushel. Corn and soy beans, the two most subsidized crops in the nation, are key ingredients for cattle feed, in turn affecting beef production and pricing. Other financial measures, such as incentives for renewable energy, promote everything from corn production for ethanol fuel, to turning farmland into solar fields. The Farm Bill regularly gets passed in Congress, funding various USDA measures, with much applause and fanfare by farm lobbyists. However, it is largely the government putting its hand on the scale to effect intended outcomes and is regularly at the mercy of whatever items senators or congressmen want to tack on in pork barrel spending for their pet projects in their home states and districts.

These factors, combined with a current shortage in the U.S. beef supply, have contributed to cattle being more profitable today as 500 lb. yearling steers rather than as finished beef. Stocker calves are bringing historic prices at the sale barn, as large corporate feedlot operations buy them by the truckload and have systems in place to arrange for transportation to the CAFO. Farmers can do the math, and these cow-calf operations are the primary model for many beef farmers so they can remain financially solvent. Feeding out cattle through buying in grain or growing it on the farm is more costly than the bird-in-the-hand price of selling stocker calves. Futures markets are also helping to drive these prices at what seems to be an unsustainable trajectory.

Large-scale agriculture has impressively increased outputs through synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified crop strains, massive logistical networks, and technological advances, which has advanced the production side of growing fat beeves. Similarly, improvements in animal handling, expanded CAFO operations, and automation within processing plants has enabled higher throughput and volume for large scale processing companies. In 2024, over 26 billion pounds of beef was processed in the United States, a number which is consistent with historic trends. Large scale corporate processing through the big four mentioned earlier make up the majority of this production.

Unfortunately, all of these things have contributed to the death of the small, local butcher shop. Instead of having many smaller processing plants across the nation, the consolidation into larger facilities has forced many small businesses out of operation, as the numbers show. Increasing regulatory pressure and requirements to conform to regulatory guidelines has been a barrier to entry for small businesses to be developed and started. Ongoing inspections and visits by USDA FSIS personnel are meant to ensure that food safety is paramount, but the unintended result is that small and very small processors are left with increasing amounts of red tape and requisite paperwork. The financial barrier to build new plants that are compliant with USDA guidelines is more than most business models can realistically overcome in the real world. The competition from large-scale beef processing systems also presents challenges for small enterprises to be financially competitive for consumer’s dollars. As “progress” continues to squeeze local abattoirs out of the market, most consumers don’t realize it, and unfortunately, they don’t care.

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Editor’s Note:  Earlier this month, ALPolitics.com reached out to Ben Michael, co-owner of the Russell County Butchery about the closure of that facility. Unfortunately, after three years of operation under increasingly difficult circumstances, he and his partner have decided not to attempt to reopen the Butchery. This deprives Seale and surrounding areas easy access to small, local-owned butchery services and products.

Mr. Mitchell was kind enough to submit this three-part series to help ALpolitics.com readers understand the difficulties small operations like his face.

With some 85% of all beef processing in America being owned and controlled by only four massive corporations—two of which are foreign-owned, as Michael discusses—this is cause for concern for those who are care about the sources and practices used in putting food into stores and on our tables.

This is more than just an issue of big corp/big government domination or overreach. It cuts to the heart of the MAHA movement, and has implications both for national security and small farms and businesses everywhere.

ALPolitics.com thanks Mr. Michael for this information, and we look forward to more from him in the future.