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lavalava,
If you know so much about how much it takes to produce rice or whatever, how 'bout you put up or shut up and get out and grow yourself some food?
There's lots of land not growing anything -- go for it and show other how it is done rather than preaching how it oughta be done!
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lavalava - please don't tell me what I should or should not be growing, raising, or eating. Simply mind your own business.
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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.
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Just make sure your windshield wipers are working if you get behind the mobile slaughterhouse while driving on Hwy. 130.
This would be a great Far Side cartoon.
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I see it now - some people need the USDA stamp in order to document the sale of their ag products. No problem with that at all. I guess I just forgot the ever present tax man for a minute there. Carry on.
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I don't know of anybody on the islands who grain feed cows. The cost would be astronomical.
If you drive down HWY 19 towards the leeward side you will notice a bunch of cornfields in the Hamakua district portion.
This is being grown for feed for dairy cows not meat cows but all the same there you have it.
I would wager they are growing their own feed on island because it is cheaper - but you never know.
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This seems to be an effort to aid the small rancher or small farmer.
The corn up the coast is GMO, we know what would happen if "certain" people found out it was being used to feed cattle.
The large ranchers have found just grass fed cattle is not marketable on the island and have found it more economical to grass feed the cattle here and ship them to the mainland for grain feeding finishing, while getting a higher price.
This means this island is growing in its opinion that total importation of food is "sustainable".
This is already hitting the snarky wit online comment area sites, and they aren't in Hawaii:
"let's start the protests!"
"Is it a 30 meter slaughterhouse???"
"Aloha also means goodbye. Aloha!"
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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The corn up the coast is GMO, we know what would happen if "certain" people found out it was being used to feed cattle.
Do you have any information to corroborate this statement Ted or are you just assuming?
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Even Ted can be right, sometime.
IIRC, it has been public that the corn there is GMO. It is a dairy farm and the corn is grown for corn silage -- stalk, grain, and all chopped just before grain gets mature -- rather than mature grain like is fed to beef cattle other places.
So, that corn is really not relevant to this topic, which is a mobile slaughtering unit for beef cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.
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Silage can be fed to beef cows as well as dairy James, seems relevant.
ETA: Oh, and still looking for some information to corroborate the lineage of the corn being grown on island.
