Racho Meats in Petaluma
The headlines are terrifying: 8.7 Million Pounds of Possibly Diseased Meat Recalled.
Petaluma’s Rancho Feeding Corp. is under fire after two recalls, the latest involving millions of pounds of “possibly diseased meat” according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. (Here is a list of retailers who carried the meat).
But here’s the thing…no one is saying the meat actually was diseased. No one has gotten sick,” according to The Press Democrat.
The issue at hand is that the meat “did not receive a full inspection” from a USDA inspector That’s it. It didn’t get a stamp of approval from the USDA.
So, now the last USDA-certified beef processing plant in the Bay Area (we’ve already lost chicken processing) is in grave danger of being permanently shuttered, leaving many local ranchers with no choice but to haul their animals several hours away–stressing the animals, creating higher carbon footprints and crippling extra costs for artisan meat producers throughout the North Bay and beyond.
If you ask folks who have used Rancho for years, they’ll tell you the family-run operation was critical to small meat producers. And we all may pay the price.
But with a dearth of USDA inspectors this situation was almost inevitable. The USDA’s own 2013 report regarding pig processing states that “some inspectors performed insufficient post-mortem and sanitation inspections, its programs lacked sufficient oversight and the FSIS could not always ensure “humane handling” at slaughter plants.
From the PD: “There are numerous steps involved in slaughtering an animal, and federal inspectors must be present to ensure that the animal is killed in a humane matter and that it does not show signs of disease. It is not yet clear which part of the process inspectors missed, if the plant’s operations will be suspended as they were in January, or how long the investigation will continue.”
“Tesconi and Beretta both said that a prolonged closure could pose a real hardship for small local ranchers who rely on the facility. The North Bay used to have several animal-processing facilities, and Tesconi said that the Farm Bureau supports the desire of the U.C. Cooperative Extension and others to see additional local USDA-inspected facilities arrive to meet the need of “the growing number of small growers doing grass-fed beef.”
Let’s hope a solution comes soon, because as one of the world’s leaders in local, sustainably and humanely raised food, Sonoma County MUST continue to have a way to process meat in a financially stable, environmentally sane way.
I’m not saying that Rancho didn’t make some mistakes. The USDA claims that there were significant health hazards and categorizes it as a CLASS ONE Recall (This is a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death). The Rancho meat processed in the last year may have been unfit for human consumption.
But, what I’m saying is that unless people have been sickened and/or there is concrete evidence of grave unsanitary or humane practices (which have not come to light), it isn’t to our benefit to jump to conclusions and cheer the closure of our last local beef processor.
Because if Rancho closes, expect your local meats to be, well, not so local. And some small, artisan beef producers to be, well, out of business. And what little local beef processing remains to either go underground and be non-USDA approved (frankly, I trust local ranchers more than large-scale corporations) or become so prohibitively expensive that factory-farmed meats from far flung countries will start looking pretty darn good.
At least that’s how I see it. What’s your take?