Until about 60 years ago, butcher shops were common, but as supermarkets replaced small grocers, local butchers disappeared. Shoppers no longer knew where their meat came from. 

A few dedicated butchers remained, and today a few more are starting. One of the traditional processing outfits that still exists is in the Hood River Valley of Oregon. Founded in 1951, Mountain Valley Meat is a family business, playing an important role in the local food economy. This is the only butcher in the county; there are just a handful of small-scale meat processors in the entire state.

Located near Mount Hood, owners Jason and Toria Johnston process meat from more than 500 farmers, ranchers, and hunters. With a crew of 12, they operate a full-service slaughterhouse handling beef, pork, lamb, goats and wild game. Customers range from backyard farmers to ranchers with many cattle.

“We bought Mountain Valley Meat in 2014 from the former owners,” Toria Johnston says. “When we discovered the old owner was ready to retire, we realized the Valley needs this facility; people want to buy their meat from local farmers.

“It needed some upgrades so we’ve repaired the facility and expanded our services,” she says. “We custom-cut and package all large animals, and opened a retail shop two miles down the road,” she says.

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The meat market is called The Butcher Block and offers smoked meats, sausage, jerky and premium beef and pork cuts. “It’s just like an old-fashioned butcher shop. You can walk in and select steaks for dinner, or hamburger. It also has a full smoke-house.”

Industry far removed

The beef industry has become far removed from the consumer; cattle are raised on large farms and ranches and trucked to big feedlots. Once “finished”, they are shipped to huge slaughterhouses that process thousands of cattle daily. Meat is sent to distributors, shipped to grocery stores and sold to customers who have no idea where it originated.

By contrast, in small-scale processing operations, animals are born, raised, slaughtered, packaged, and sold close to home. This reduces transportation costs, boosts local food supply, and people know where it came from.

During COVID-19, closures of large-scale facilities exposed flaws in our food chain, severely impacting supply. Animals were waiting to be slaughtered, yet meat shelves in grocery stores were empty. Oregon Department of Agriculture provided grants to help small operators increase capacity to meet local demand, reducing reliance on large, distant slaughterhouses. Mountain Valley Meat was among six processors in Oregon to receive a $300,000 grant to expand their capacity, allowing the Johnstons to make improvements and upgrade the tools of their trade.

Related:USDA announces major investment in meat and poultry processing

“Many people raise their own beef but want it processed,” Toria Johnston says. “It takes time and equipment; butchering and cutting meat is labor intensive, and difficult if you are just processing one or two animals a year.” 

One person usually can’t afford equipment for cutting and grinding. A professional butcher can do it more efficiently.

“There’s a shortage of people who know how to process meat,” Johnston says. “This is a trade not very many people want to do anymore,” Toria says.  “That’s one of our biggest struggles—finding experienced employees.”

Family business in Wyoming

Michael (Mac) and Celsie Sussex have a ranch in southeastern Wyoming, and were marketing and selling beef in halves, wholes, and quarters to customers until COVID-19 presented challenges in getting them processed. They started looking into other options and created their own--Bear Mountain Beef. 

“We opened our plant December 2021. We’d been selling beef all over the country but ran into a roadblock trying to find processing. We were hauling cattle 200 to 300 miles to be processed,” Mac Sussex says.

“Originally we were just going to be small and do our own cattle, to provide our customers with beef from farm to consumer,” he says. “We kept getting requests from people wanting us to process their animals. Now we’re doing about 25 beef a week. We’ve been super busy, and blessed to have good employees. Most of them have been with us since we started.

“My wife and I had to learn as we went. When we were just ranching we hauled our butcher cattle to the processor, then picked up the meat and delivered or shipped it. That was the extent of our experience. Now, three years later, either of us can do any job in our plant. This is probably the most unforgiving profession I’ve ever been in.  I’ve welded and done construction, ranched my whole life, but once you cut on a piece of meat you can’t put it together again.”

You must do it right the first time, he says.

“It’s been a struggle with the economy these past few years, but we are doing well,” Sussex says. “In the beginning 40% of the cattle we processed were our own, but now it’s 10%. We’re doing more custom processing for other people.”

Only domestic livestock

They only process domestic livestock, though many people have asked them to process wild game. “We don’t, however, because we are a USDA-inspected facility, and also some of our beef customers said that if we started doing wild game they would go somewhere else with their beef.  We just do beef, hogs, lambs and goats, but we’ve done two bison that were custom exempt, and one water buffalo from Colorado that was a backyard pet they’d been milking, to make cheese,” Sussex says.

“We’ve learned a lot, and have made mistakes, but try to get a little better every day. It’s a team effort. My little brother runs the processing floor. We also partnered with some folks in Colorado--Mountain View Meats. They helped us finance ours and we split profits 50-50. They are silent partners and bring us cattle to process.”

Being USDA inspected takes a lot of preparation and hoops to jump through. There’s a huge need for more processing businesses, but it takes time to get them going, and some of the ones that started aren’t continuing. 

“I hate to hear this because we need all the processors we can get,” he says. “We believe that quality affordable beef should be available to everyone.  Smaller slaughter outfits that have popped up in the last five years are starting to cut into big plants’ markets a little and we’re seeing some pushback from the big guys, like wanting producers to be required to use EID tags. Those bigger facilities will be exempt, even though they have the economy of scale and the tags wouldn’t cost them that much; the small producers will pay a lot more per head.”

Teaching future butchers

With shortage of custom processors, Sussex and his crew host a school for people to learn how to process meat. 

“Our Butcher School is a collaborative team effort to pass on knowledge and skills of the art of cutting meat,” Sussex says. “Our first goal was to provide a stable food chain and better access to quality processing in rural Wyoming.”

After accomplishing this, they moved toward training others. 

“People enrolling in our courses have hands-on working experience with a one-on-one coach,” he says. “We help students focus on anything from starting a new operation to honing skills in any particular area. When people enroll they receive a textbook created by our staff. Once training is complete, they also receive access to an online library of videos to help refresh their knowledge at any time. We offer flexible options for 3-day crash courses, 2-week focused courses and 4-week in-depth courses.”