Bay Area Ranchers mobile slaughterhouse folds after less than 2 years, dealing blow to local livestock industry

The bad news came “out of the blue” last December, recalled Jeff Kent, owner of Takenoko Farms in Windsor. The evening before he was supposed to haul a trailer of his hogs to Petaluma for slaughter, Kent got an email from the Bay Area Ranchers Co-Operative — the BAR-C for short. His appointment was canceled.

The news wouldn’t become official for another 11 months, but the BAR-C was finished.

That cooperative consisted of around 40 livestock ranchers — two dozen of them from Sonoma County — who raised $1.2 million to purchase their own slaughterhouse, and in so doing take firmer control of their destinies.

The 36-foot-long mobile processing plant filled a critical gap for the ranchers, who were often left scrambling, their operations disrupted by the shrinking number of options for livestock slaughter.

Their need became more acute in late 2019 when Marin Sun Farms, whose Petaluma slaughterhouse is the only USDA-certified facility in the Bay Area, announced that it would no longer process animals for private rancher-owned labels. That left livestock owners with little choice than to truck their animals to Eureka or the Central Valley for processing.

And so, after years of fundraising and education, the BAR-C was unveiled in February 2022 with considerable fanfare, including the presence of an undersecretary from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“This is the future of regenerative agriculture,” co-op member Adam Parks, co-owner of the Victorian Farmstead Meat Co. in Sebastopol, said at the time.

Instead, the BAR-C is now a thing of the past. Plagued by delays in acquiring equipment and a lack of skilled staff, among other issues, the cooperative announced “with heavy hearts” Tuesday that it had closed.

While that statement was dated Nov. 6, the facility had stopped processing animals last December — disappointing and frustrating co-op members, who make up an important sector of the area’s economy. Sonoma County livestock ranchers produced $25.4 million worth of cattle, sheep and lambs in 2022, with some 34,000 cattle accounting for 82% of that value, according the county crop report released Tuesday.

Staff woes

The reasons for its untimely demise, the co-op shared in Tuesday’s statement, included “the departure of our harvest manager in October 2021 before we officially opened,” and “complications” with the USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) that were “exacerbated by a shortage of skilled and experienced staff.”

One co-op member mentioned a failure of some ranches to consistently “show up.” The resulting irregular demand contributed to the BAR-C's inability to hire “the right people to run it.”

The situation worsened, according to the BAR-C, “when our lead slaughterman gave notice just before the Thanksgiving holiday in November 2022.”

That dearth of skilled and experienced workers surely contributed to the string of citations it received from the USDA, starting on its very first day. On that February morning, according the USDA records, the BAR-C was cited for “inhumane handling of livestock.” After an unsuccessful attempt to knock a hog unconscious by administering a severe blow to its skull with a “handheld captive bolt gun,” the operator “then began preparing the chain to hoist the hog.”

The attending FSIS veterinarian “pointed out that the animal was still breathing rhythmically and would need to be re-stunned.”

While the hog was successfully knocked out on the second attempt, the slaughterhouse’s operations were suspended for a day by the USDA.

On April 29, 2022, the operator of a stun gun failed in three attempts to knock out a beef cow, which was subsequently shot with a rifle.

On July 6 of that year, it took a BAR-C employee four tries with a bolt gun render a lamb unconscious.

On Nov. 29, according to yet another “Notice of Suspension” letter from the FSIS, an “adult sheep” struggled and remained conscious after three attempts to knock it out with the bolt gun. A fourth attempt succeeded.

Each of these failures “to prevent the inhumane handling and slaughter of livestock” resulted in a suspension.

By December 2022, the BAR-C had shut down operations. For the next seven months, its board tried in vain to find “a suitable operator” to continue its mission.

“I feel horrible for the investors,” said Parks, who is out $3,000 himself. “There’s a lot of people who put a lot of money into that project that got the short end of stick.”

Two local options

Fortunately for livestock ranchers in the area, two other mobile processing plants had sprung up in the months before the BAR-C was born. Those outfits, JMF Slaughter and North Bay Butchers, have done much to absorb customers orphaned by the BAR-C's closure.

“JMF Slaughter saved the day,” said Park, who described that plant’s owner, John Fagundes, for being “very quick on his feet, quick to pivot.”

A journeyman carpenter from south Santa Rosa, Fagundes was indeed light on his feet when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

“I was working in the city, building high-rises,” he said. “Then COVID happened and we all got sent home.”

Watching the news, he recalled, he learned of a meat shortage, compounded by the pandemic.

He did some homework, and learned that area ranchers had no choice but to truck their animals “three, four hours,” to get them slaughtered.

After doing more research, he took a bold step — and dug deep into his savings — to fill that need. His 36-foot mobile harvesting unit is the same model as the one run by the BAR-C, he said.

While he’d grown up raising and selling small numbers of cattle, “I’d never slaughtered an animal,” said Fagundes. “We always called a guy. It’s a trade. It’s a skill.”

It’s a skill now in his repertoire.

He’s not quick to judge facilities that get cited by the USDA. “Everyone has problems, right? I’ve missed knocks myself.”

“It’s how you correct it, what you do to fix those problems. That’s what the USDA wants to see.”

Recognizing the difficulty of knocking out a hog with a handheld bolt gun, Fagundes switched to a system that knocks the pig out by delivering an electrical current to a pair of electrodes, just under its ears.

“It was new to us, so we had a learning curve,” he recalled. “So we found out what we needed to do, created a plan, and now it’s like clockwork.”

A few months after JMF Slaughter was born, another Petaluma-based mobile meat processing company rolled onto the scene. North Bay Butchers, originally called The Farm Abattoir, opened its doors in September 2021.

That outfit is run by Rob McKenzie, a fifth-generation butcher and rancher, and James Stoll, who comes to ranching from the finance world.

Like Fagundes, they experienced a learning curve.

Like JMF, they now use an electrical system to stun hogs.

Lingering disruption to industry

McKenzie and Stoll are “really good guys,” said Kent, the Windsor hog farmer who got the bad news last December that the BAR-C had shut down, and couldn’t slaughter his animals.

In his business, Kent shared, he’s grown accustomed to such body blows. Between the cost of feed and processing, then getting the meat cut and wrapped, his margins are tighter than ever.

To save money, he engages in “food waste diversion” — collecting organic scraps from supermarkets and restaurants, spent grain from distilleries and breweries, to feed his animals.

After scrambling for months to find a place to process his hogs, Kent found North Bay Butchers. But he hasn’t brought them any swine, lately. The BAR-C going belly up seriously disrupted his business. Since then it’s been a struggle for him to get his hogs processed, which is why he recently started a GoFundMe page, asking for a little help.

Whatever became of those pigs who got the last-minute reprieve 11 months ago?

“I still have ‘em,” he said with a laugh. “They just keep getting bigger. They're hanging out on the pasture, living their best life.”

Staff Writer Jennifer Graue contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.