Mobile Slaughterhouse

I read a lot of blogs, and it’s funny to see unexpected crossovers. While I enjoy the Consumerist for its snarky tales of purchases gone horribly wrong, I was happily surprised this morning to read a post tagged “locavores,” reporting from a Seattle Times article about a new mobile slaughterhouse in Washington state that will bring a USDA-inspected facility to small farms where the animals are.

We need one of these here! USDA-inspected slaughter is mandatory if a rancher wants to sell cuts of meat. While I’m happy to buy whole lambs and half pigs, as in so many other areas, I’m in the tiny minority of meat buyers. The nearest facilities for the folks in Santa Cruz county, where I like to buy my meat, are over the Central Valley. Long drives there stress out the animals, when the whole point of humane farming is that they will only have “one bad day in their lives.”

I’m not clued in enough to know the status of a similar project here in California, but I’m heartened to see it happening up in Washington.