Business is booming for many small, local meat processors and butchers, as massive slaughterhouses face COVID crises

• Demand has increased at small meat processors and butchers, as the country's industrial-scale meatpacking facilities have become coronavirus hotspots and been forced to close or reduce their output.
• The sudden demand for local butchers and meat processors arrives during a time when relatively few remain.
• "I could run this thing around the clock. Feedlots in this country are full, and ranchers and feeders cannot find anywhere to get this stuff processed," Jacob Wingebach, owner of Sandhills Beef Company, said.
• And Wingebach is hiring: "I'm offering the American Dream."

Six years ago, Jacob Wingebach, a resident inspector for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, walked away from a lucrative career 20 years in the making and bought a meatpacking plant in the heart of the Nebraska Sandhills.

"I had never cut a steak or killed an animal in my life," he said. "I was an idiot. I didn't know what I didn't know."

He had originally planned to offer grass-fed organic products, but after two years struggling to develop the niche business, he finally scrapped the idea, focusing instead on custom processing, working with area ranchers to slaughter and dry age their beef. Each year he's watched his remaining capital dwindle, just "eeking it out" and wondering how much longer he can keep at it. But over the last few months, many of the country's industrial-scale meatpacking facilities have become coronavirus hotspots and been forced to close or reduce their output. Problems at those big meatpacking facilities have created a glut of slaughter-ready livestock and a surge in demand at the Sandhills Beef Company and many other small processors.

"I could run this thing around the clock. Feedlots in this country are full, and ranchers and feeders cannot find anywhere to get this stuff processed," Wingebach said. "Our business has increased drastically, and that means new opportunity."

Trevor Butterfield, rancher and co-owner of Butterfield Beef near Atkinson, Nebraska, 160 miles east, would typically process about 10-percent of his herd at the local meat locker, and sell the rest to a larger industrialized meatpacking plant. But like many other ranchers and farmers right now, Butterfield hasn't been able to secure a bid on his finished cattle from the larger facilities. Rather than hold back until the supply chain levels out, Butterfield Beef turned to smaller processors like Sandhills Beef and started advertising their own products online. With meat prices soaring in the supermarket and a renewed skepticism about America's food systems, he says, the offer quickly caught traction.

Many small processors--Sandhills Beef included--are what the USDA labels "custom exempt," meaning they're exempt from continuous federal inspection, and thus can only slaughter and process meat for the sole use of the livestock owner. To work around this system, producers often sell portions of the live animal instead, usually a quarter, half, or full. In the case of Butterfield Beef, customers receive the meat processed and portioned (i.e., steaks, roasts, hamburger, etc.).

"It kind of blew up, and we've been really busy," Butterfield says. "That's why we expanded to Sandhills Beef and put it in such a big order. Consumers get to know where their beef is coming from. I think that's a big thing, and we've seen a huge outpouring of support."

Since the pandemic began, Wingebach has hired four new employees—luring one from the Texas oil fields—and would ideally hire dozens more, he says, if his neck of the Sandhills had anything close to adequate housing. In a single day earlier this month, Sandhills Beef booked 80 head of cattle, and they're now processing more than twenty cows a week, double what they were before the virus broke loose. They're booked solid with orders like Butterfield's through the end of the year and could book even further out if they could find adequate staff.

The impact of COVID-19 on small scale butchers and meat processors is further complicated by the services they provide. Many small processors also operate a retail counter, but if they're custom exempt, they can't sell their own processed meat at retail. To fill their cases with federally inspected meat, they often source from the same larger processors (or third-party wholesalers)that have been hindered by outbreaks of COVID-19. As meat production at large-scale processors slows down, it's hard for some small butchers to get their hands on meat.

"These bigger processors are going to sell to who's buying the most," says Chris Young, executive director of the American Association of Meat Processors. "And our small processors are the ones that are going to get left out, especially if they're not willing to pay the prices these folks want."

Still, small processors often seem an attractive substitute for those who have been shocked by shortages and long lines at the supermarket.

"People don't want to go to the grocery store right now," says Bob Strong, owner of Twin Loups Quality Meats, a federally inspected meat processor and market in St. Paul, Nebraska. Like Sandhills Beef Company, they've more than doubled their bookings since the pandemic began, and a single ad in the local newspaper for a half-side of beef (at $3.29/lb fully cut and wrapped) and a free half-hog left them flooded with calls for the next two weeks. "So they can come to their local meat market, and they can pick up their meat and not have to worry about 50 other people standing around them."

The sudden demand for local butchers and meat processors arrives after many have closed shop. Once a staple of Main Street America, they have since vanished from many small towns in the wake of rural depopulation, industrialized agriculture, and the centralization of the meatpacking industry. While the local foods movement has, in recent years, begun to pull a new generation back into the fray—especially among larger urban and suburban populations—craft butchery has become something of a lost art in many rural areas as an older generation retires. Even before the pandemic hit, the few who endured were often booked months out with processing orders.

"It's a tough industry to be in, and there were a lot of years where there was no next generation that wanted to be a part of it," Young said. "And so a lot of butchers started closing the doors because they either couldn't sell it or didn't have family members to take it over."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for a butcher in 2019 was just $32,500, or $15.62 an hour. And in most cases, small processors say, market forces—from federal regulations to the cost of equipment and labor—favor the larger packers.

"In a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all system, the laws and the mandates that have been drawn up and are issued for big packers just don't always translate to the way small producers operate," says Bryan Mayer, director of product at the Kunoa Cattle Company in Hawaii and a leading advocate for the craft butcher movement. "The thing that's plaguing every aspect of our industry, certainly on this more regional, smaller scale, is 'Who's going to pay for the facility, and who's going to work in it?'"

In early May, raw with emotion and drained from another long week under pandemic conditions, Wingebach turned to Facebook looking for dedicated workers and promoting "a unique opportunity right now in our food system to create change." He posted a photo of himself beside 17 skinned beef carcasses, the "week's haul."

"It's a wild ride we're on and I'd love to hire some folks that have experience breaking down or slaughtering in a custom exempt shop," he wrote. "In short, I'm offering the American Dream."

Within a week, his post had been shared nearly six thousand times.

"He's emblematic of the small local producer. That guy exists in male and female form all over this country, quietly doing what they've always done, and doing it well," Mayer says. "His pain is something that I think is echoed throughout our side of the industry. 'We've got the work for you. Come and do it with us.' But how do you tell somebody that you're going to work ten-plus hours a day, you're going to be exhausted and in pain, and, oh, you're going to be paid less than any other trade."