05-09-2015, 12:31 PM
Almost all Big Island grass fed cows are transported to Los Angeles. Some of them on the Kalitta 747 you occasionally see on Saturdays at the Kona Airport. Others are barged over. From there they are trucked to Texas and finished in grain houses and butchered. Then they are processed and sent all over the world. Some of them make their journey back to Hawaii in neat little packages. I don't know of anybody on the islands who grain feed cows. The cost would be astronomical.
Does anybody think this a good idea? That our beef has to make a round trip from a remote island in the Pacific, to Texas and back? How much fossil fuel does that use?
Mobile slaughterhouses, although a relatively newer implementation, are used all over the country. It takes a huge amount of stress off the animals. Virtually all of them get motion sickness being transported, on top of the stress of getting rounded up and packed into semi truck trailers. Any reduction in the stress by bringing the processing to them is a good idea.
Our livestock have never had a drop of municipal water, so I'm not sure what that argument is even about. The mobile slaughterhouse will probably use muni water for cleaning and sanitizing. A 747 burns about a gallon of fuel per second, or roughly 5 gallons per mile.
The big change this is going to bring is that small local producers will finally have a way to legally sell USDA certified meat directly to the stores or to the public. I think the only way to do that before was that one place in Hilo (name escapes me). I don't know how the mobile slaughterhouse will compare in price but at least it will bring much needed capacity to the island. Since the mobile slaughterhouse co-op will buy animals outright, a producer could choose to have their animals processed and essentially make payment in animals. Some of the meat would be sold by the co-op and the farmer retains as much or as little as they want. This will lower the capital necessary for the producer, and that will bring more legal LOCAL meat to market.
ETA: This has nothing to do with dedicating more land to ranching. It has everything to do with keeping our locally produced meat on the islands instead of relying on barges and airplanes to feed us.
Does anybody think this a good idea? That our beef has to make a round trip from a remote island in the Pacific, to Texas and back? How much fossil fuel does that use?
Mobile slaughterhouses, although a relatively newer implementation, are used all over the country. It takes a huge amount of stress off the animals. Virtually all of them get motion sickness being transported, on top of the stress of getting rounded up and packed into semi truck trailers. Any reduction in the stress by bringing the processing to them is a good idea.
Our livestock have never had a drop of municipal water, so I'm not sure what that argument is even about. The mobile slaughterhouse will probably use muni water for cleaning and sanitizing. A 747 burns about a gallon of fuel per second, or roughly 5 gallons per mile.
The big change this is going to bring is that small local producers will finally have a way to legally sell USDA certified meat directly to the stores or to the public. I think the only way to do that before was that one place in Hilo (name escapes me). I don't know how the mobile slaughterhouse will compare in price but at least it will bring much needed capacity to the island. Since the mobile slaughterhouse co-op will buy animals outright, a producer could choose to have their animals processed and essentially make payment in animals. Some of the meat would be sold by the co-op and the farmer retains as much or as little as they want. This will lower the capital necessary for the producer, and that will bring more legal LOCAL meat to market.
ETA: This has nothing to do with dedicating more land to ranching. It has everything to do with keeping our locally produced meat on the islands instead of relying on barges and airplanes to feed us.