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Jessica: My name is Jessica Smith with This Old Farm
in Colfax Indiana or outside of Colfax Indiana
If anybody would have ever asked me
if I would do meat processing at any point in time
in the last ten years I would have laughed
I started at a vegetarian, uh meat processing
was not something I thought was in my future
However, we had a small farm operation
and I wanted to see that farm operation grow
Uh it had problems with processing and
as we got involved in researching the processing industry
throughout America realized that there were
real challenges in that processing industry
Mark: What's important to know about meat processing
for farmers, I think in the situation
if you're just getting into this,
is it's important to understand the process,
what it goes through
I think it's important to go to your meat processor,
somebody you're going to have,
that you're going to use for your facilities
To talk to them and understand
what they have to go through,
what they really desire for a finished animal,
what they would like to have
Uh and then go to your consumer
and find out what they'd like to have
So it's understanding the whole process that goes on
It's easy for me just to raise on animal out here
and ship it off somewhere,
and say you ought to take it, but I'm not quite sure
what you really want
Jolena: So in the media recently the agriculture industry
and food production especially has
um had some pretty poor media um
that will sometimes really concern the consumer
so that they don't understand
what's going on or they may think that products
from a larger processor might not be safe
So, this has caused people to really step back
and look more locally for their products
Looking to shop at say farmers markets
or smaller processors that they know
and they can trust and build a relationship with
I would like to emphasize that
large processors or small processors
as long as their doing their job well
that food is going to be safe
I really trust all of the food that's in our system
no matter what size processor it's coming from
But the people that are looking for that local product,
The small processor can really serve a unique role there
and provide that niche market
that some of our consumers are looking for
So, here in the state of Indiana
we have a few different options
as far as processing and retailing meat products
You can be USDA inspected, which is what most
of our large processors are going to be
That means you can sell your product
anywhere in the United States and
often it will qualify for exports as well
A lot of our smaller processors will choose to work
at the state level with state inspection
What this means is you have uh
Indiana board of animal health inspector
And it's a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more flexible
as far as schedules when the inspectors
can come to your facility
Still the same quality of safety
and the same level of inspection,
but a little bit more flexibility
The challenge with that though is that
then you are restricted
to selling your products only within the state of Indiana
Another option is to do custom exempt
What this means is that the processor
does not actually sell meat to the public
They provide a service for
harvesting an animal and processing it
So, in that case the owner would bring their animal
in and the processor would charge them for this service
And, then that person would take
their own products back home
In this case there's not an inspection
that is taking place and so
the owner of the animal is assuming
all of the safety on themselves
Jessica: We are now a
federally um inspected processing facility
and we just went under federal inspection last year
Before that we were a
state inspected processing facility
So, we choose federal inspection,
or knew that we were going to go under
federal inspection
to be able to broaden our reach
out of the state of Indiana
The USDA definition of local is within 400 miles.
So we still believe in that local food product,
but local is Chicago, local is Kentucky
and we can broaden our reach
and thus improve the sustainability
of our own processing facility to be able to process
and then move that meat across state lines
It's been an interesting experience working all the way
through all the different challenges
of not only small business,
but also of processing and helping farmers
That's where my passion is, is supporting agriculture
Processing to me is a need for the agriculture
to grow in the state of Indiana
Jolena: Some of the challenges we see,
especially with our smaller processors,
is that the regulations with inspections and food safety
are changing pretty rapidly
and sometimes it's difficult for them to keep up
with all of those changes and
That should be the role
not only of their inspection agency,
but of people like Purdue Extension
to make sure we are communicating those changes
and helping them facilitate that
Mark: Part of the part of the mission
of Purdue Cooperative Extension Service
is to put people together in some ways
And that is we can help out individuals find areas
that they can purchase animals and get animals at or
tell them who in the area they might want to look into
as well as the fact that we will talk to the farmers,
Uh the producers and tell them areas they might want to
put their their emphasis in marketing into
One of the things that we have in Extension
to help people out in reference to information
is the small farms website
The Purdue's Small Farms Team is a group of us
educators and specialists that are on campus
and we get together on a regular basis
and plan programs for people that are small farms
It's very difficult to put a caption on what a small farm is
It can go anywhere from less than an acre
Up to a couple hundred acres really as you look at it
So, what the small farms team does is
provide programming that is needed
for those people to capture that audience and
to give them some educational information that
Purdue University can supply them
to help their operations and
hopefully help them make money in the process
Jessica: Really our farm is just one small picture
of what we hope to see which is
livestock back out on the ground
The consolidation of American food system
has happened across the nation and
we understand that side of life as well,
however we want to maintain and
grow the ability for folks to go ahead and farm
and for the family farm to succeed and
That again comes back to having processing options
Our farm is one of those and we do want to see it,
of course, success in our own farm operation
but really we want to see others return to the farm and
know that it's a viable option
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