Meat processing co-op holds tours

Montana Premium Processing Cooperative, which will process its first cow this week, held tours of its facility Sunday for locals interested in its future work or potentially investing.

The user-owned co-op's steering committee was started three years ago with the help of Montana Farmers Union and is part of a larger effort to increase local processing and packing capacity as the industry becomes increasingly consolidated.

Montana Premium Processing Board Chair Paul Neubauer led the tours Sunday, bringing people through the facility showing them its various areas, explaining how it all works and answering questions about the building and the co-op as a business.

The co-op, Neubauer said, has 55 members, but is looking for more, which would require the purchase of shares in the business.

Members will get priority access to the facility and have lower kill fees and processing fees, but anyone can use the facility to produce USDA-approved products for retail, or state-inspected meat for personal use, he said.

He said the facility is designed to handle cattle, bison, lamb and pig, but they also have a few deer they're looking to process as part of Havre's urban deer population management plan.

Neubauer said the facility's corral area, which is covered and has a water source available for the animals, can hold animals for a day but is not designed to keep them overnight.

He said the corral, which leads into the kill box, is designed to minimize stress for the animals and the box is designed to kill them instantly before they are hung to be drained.

The facility is outfitted with a mobile harvesting unit covered by a permanent barn structure, which Neubauer said was more cost-efficient to build than a permanent kill floor with the grants they had access to.

However, he said, the co-op plans to eventually get a permanent kill floor and use the mobile unit to either set up another co-op or expand this one.

He walked tour groups through that area of the facility explaining the equipment they had and how it all fits together.

He said at full capacity the kill floor would need four people to work it, but processing and packaging is a bit more complicated, so, all told, the facility would need 14 people to operate at maximum capacity, which would be between 12 and 16 head per day.

When asked if the facility could process animals that had already been slaughtered by producers, he said they prefer to handle all of that themselves as that is required to get the meat USDA certified, though the rules may be different for state-inspected.

Neubauer said the facility's equipment is designed to handle a number of different kinds of animals and it's adaptable enough that they don't need to switch out much to cover the kinds of animals they would get.

He said one thing they are still looking to set up is a way to compost the byproducts of the animals, including bones and blood.

He said with the right tools, every part of the animals can be used and they are looking into the most passive methods of composting much of that material.

In the meantime, Neubauer said, if anyone already has the means to compost some of these materials they would be happy to give them to them.

"I would love to not have to pay to send something to the dump that is very valuable," he said.

Neubauer also showed the groups the processing floor, which features two dry-aged coolers.

He said they don't have the capacity to make some value-added products like sausage and cured meats, but once things get going at the co-op they are planning to add a smokehouse to produce some of those things "one, because they're delicious, and two, because they're much-more profitable."

He said the co-op also has specialized boxes designed to let meats freeze in them, which cuts out a noticeable amount of work for employees and speeds up the process.

Neubauer said the co-op doesn't have a marketing component for the meats they produce, so potential retailers will have to handle that themselves, but they might consider adding something like that in the future.

"That's really up to the membership to determine," he said.

During the tour, Neubauer also talked about an ongoing partnership with Montana State University-Northern, which is developing a meat processing program and degree with the co-op's help.

He said he doesn't really have a detailed timeline as to when that would be set up, but the university is planning to offer certificates as well as an associate or bachelor's degree, depending on how much business management education is integrated into the program.

He said 10 students have committed to the program and, when it is set up, the co-op will give them hands-on experience as interns.

Neubauer said the co-op's manager, Bill Jones, is an excellent educator, having trained dozens of people to be expert processors throughout his career.