How Little Colorado Meats is Bringing Back Local Meat Processing
Karalea Wiltbank, Project Director for Little Colorado Meats
Roger McQueen, Operations Director for Little Colorado Meats
Little Colorado Meats brand
In 2014, Apache County was deemed the place with the least reliable access to healthy food for children in the nation, with over 40% of the county’s children having limited or inconsistent access to food. Nearly 10 years later, the county located in the northeastern corner of Arizona with a population of roughly 66,000 remains number one in the state for food insecurity.
In 2019, Little Colorado Meats (LCM) formed specifically to change that. LCM works to connect local ranchers with local, rural communities and people to provide fresh, nutritious meat. LCM is Arizona’s first USDA inspected mobile meat harvest unit and processor for local cattle, hogs, goats, and lamb, as well as for hunters. The story of why and how they came about—and what this means to communities—is as hearty as the meat they sell.
The Critical Need for Local Processors
The current meat industry is highly concentrated and consolidated with a few conglomerate monopolies controlling most global meat production and processing. In the beef industry alone, four large meat-packing companies control 85% of the market, which also includes the “processing” component. Processing consists of the slaughtering/harvesting of the animal and the butchering of the animal into cuts that are later sold to consumers in stores and at farmers markets. These meatpackers and processors often buy from ranchers and sell to retailers like grocery stores, making them a key player AND a bottleneck in the food supply chain.
A highly concentrated and consolidated market and processing infrastructure means a more fragile food system, as seen in COVID when the meat supply chain was heavily adversely affected— from ranchers needing to cull animals because they could not get their livestock into the few available processors to a lack of availability of meat products in stores. A consolidated and concentrated food system also means that large monopolies can and do drive up the price of meat, manipulate markets because of unenforced antitrust laws, and underpay farmers. During COVID, the big four meatpackers profit margins shot up by 300%, while small farmers and ranchers struggled to survive. As a result, consumers suffer from price volatility and practices that undermine the quality and nutrition of these meat products. For example, a common practice among feedlot, industrialized agriculture is to “finish” beef products with cheap feed (like corn and soy) for faster weight gain or to enhance the meat with saline injections to increase the meat’s volume and artificially age the meat.
Little Colorado Meats formed to directly address the monopolized meat system, the need for more local processors, and the lack of nutrient-dense animal proteins for Apache County and other communities. LCM’s meat is sourced from hard-working ranchers in the local areas and raised on grasses and locally grown feedstock, which generally takes an additional six to nine months to gain the ideal weight for processing. This results in a quality, nutrient-dense product for consumers. They also dry-age their beef for 14 days minimum (no saline injections) for a more tender and robust flavor. They purchase their animals from local ranchers at a premium price to ensure ranchers receive a full and fair price, which is generally double what ranchers would receive than by selling their cattle to a feedlot or conventional meatpacking company.
LCM provides an alternative to the monopolized meat industry by raising, processing, and selling local quality beef to communities in order to transform the local economy by making rural communities more self-sufficient and resilient.
How Collaboration Led to Little Colorado Meats
At the heart of Little Colorado Meats operations is Karalea Wiltbank, a fifth generation cattle rancher impassioned to increase local food security in Arizona. Not only is she Project Director for LCM, but she also serves as the President of the Foundation for Little Colorado Revitalization (FfLCR), a nonprofit dedicated to boosting local small businesses, creating jobs, and improving rural quality of life in southern Apache County.
If you ask Karalea what made LCM possible, she would say: “Collaboration. And, finding key partners.” Through her role at FfLCR, she has worked closely with Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC) to strengthen the capacity of the foundation through grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Rural Development (USDA-RD). Using USDA-RD grant funds, FfLCR hosted RCAC-facilitated workshops where a broad range of community members identified potential projects that would boost the local economy and improve the livelihoods of those in the local rural area. Agriculture and cattle ranching have served as a backbone for Apache County, but because of the highly consolidated and concentrated structure of the food system, local ranchers – like Karalea – receive pennies on the dollar through the conventional beef supply chain.
“People may not realize this, but 95% of Arizona’s beef is exported for harvest, meaning much of the local beef is leaving the state instead of directly feeding and benefiting our communities. The conglomerate monopolies profit from their position as intermediaries at the expense of rural communities like Eagar.”
From the workshop discussions, a clear vision emerged: FfLCR would create its own meat processing facility through a social enterprise approach that would produce high-quality, USDA-certified beef sourced from local ranchers and provided to local communities. In 2019, Karalea began the journey to find a way to bring a USDA meat processing plant to Eagar.
One of the key players that turned the local processor vision into reality is Roger McQueen, the Operations Director for LCM. Best described as a jack-of-all-trades, Roger has a strong background in working with USDA-inspected processing facilities. His harvesting and processing skills with nearly every kind of livestock animal and his ability to repair specialized equipment for processing operations has enabled LCM to function efficiently and adapt to the unique situations that come from being the state’s first USDA inspected mobile harvest unit. “Little Colorado Meats wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t found Roger. Now, we just have to figure out how to pass along all his knowledge to the next generation. Or, clone him,” Karalea said.
Mobile Harvest Unit
Dry-aging beef
Onsite freezer storage for local ranchers and LCM products
Changing the Game With USDA-Certified Mobile Processors
Little Colorado Meats is Arizona’s first USDA-inspected mobile meat harvest unit and is shifting the way animal processing is done in the state. Since their slaughter services are mobile, LCM can travel to where a ranch is located if the appropriate setup and equipment is available. For ranches that are located far from Eager, LCM accepts animals at their onsite slaughter facility, which enables them to process livestock for ranchers around the state. The mobile harvest unit can also remotely process and hold up to 15 whole cows at a time. As other processors are shutting down and Arizona producers are struggling to find places to process their livestock or transporting their animals as far away as Durango, Colorado, LCM provides services to any size producer, which is critical for small-scale producers who wish to sell directly to the consumer. This offers consumers a closer connection to where their food comes from and allows ranchers to receive more of the food dollar by cutting out the middlemen – large meatpackers and retail outlets that take large cuts of the profit. LCM provides a lifeline for local ranchers and local economies by keeping high-quality meat within Arizona communities.
It’s also important that LCM is a USDA-FSIS certified processor, especially when it comes to processing standards and opening market channels for local producers. Being a USDA-inspected facility means an on-site USDA inspector closely supervises and inspects the harvest facility with a high-powered flashlight (to see in every corner) every day before harvesting operations begin. The USDA inspector also inspects every animal—first while it is alive and then checking the brain and organs during the slaughter process. The inspector also inspects the processing facility during the entire cut and packaging process.
USDA certification not only allows LCM to process meat that can be sold in Arizona, but the certification also enables them and partnering producers to sell to regional out-of-state neighbors, such as New Mexico, whose border is 15 miles away from the Springerville-Eager area. If a producer is not able to or does not want a direct market to consumers, LCM will purchase the cattle from the rancher as long it meets the requirements ideal for processing: the cattle must weigh a minimum of 1,000 pounds and is less than 30 months old. LCM pays the rancher a fair, premium price at around $4 per pound carcass weight.
LCM has also earned the Humane Handling Certification through USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection service, which means they implement low-stress handling techniques for cattle and process animals in a humane, compassionate manner to minimize the possibility of injuries and suffering of livestock.
The Return to Native Grasses & Traditional Knowledge
In addition to connecting Apache County and regional partners with critical processing infrastructure, Little Colorado Meats educates producers on livestock feed management in order to increase operational profitability. Many ranchers in Arizona follow a cow-calf model, which means they auction off their calves instead of retaining ownership through slaughter and processing. A major reason for following this model is the challenge of feeding livestock to meet ideal slaughtering weight, which is around 1,000 lbs for cattle. “With more education and support in livestock feed management, ranchers can get more proficient at reaching ideal weights needed for optimal in-state processing operations,” Karalea noted.
One crucial component to feed management, Karalea stressed, is the need to return to traditional, place-based knowledge, such as feeding livestock native grasses. In the high desert plateau area where Eager sits, there is historical significance of it being home to grama grass, some of the most nutritious livestock feed. Testimonies dating back to the 1850s documented experiences with southwest grama grass and accounts of grama grass growing so high that the Apaches would bury themselves under the thick grass to hide from enemies. The highly nutrient-dense grass was described as “the most nutritious herbage ever cropped by quadrupeds. It is much heavier, contains more saccharine in connection with more farinaceous and strength-giving aliment than any other grass known … the very first rank among all sorts of hay, believing it to be superior to clover, timothy, alfalfa, or all three together.”
Karalea advocates for more growing of grama grass and feeding of it to livestock, which was once a common practice in the area. “Eagar is home to grama grass. The average person may not understand its value and how easily it grows,” she said. “It’s high in protein so it’s a nutritious livestock feed. It’s a mainstay in Northern Arizona and what our livestock thrives on.”
Returning to traditional practices by feeding livestock native grasses is crucial to improving the viability and profitability of local ranchers, as well as producing a nutrient-dense meat for consumers. Eager was once an area glowing in a purple/grayish hue from fields of grama grass that return each year and after the monsoons. Cattle would graze on the purple grama grass fields. This grass requires less water and thrives in areas of poor soil better than other grasses. When asked why ranchers in the area don’t grow more grama grass and use it as livestock feed, Karalea replied, “I think it’s because people don’t value traditional knowledge as much. There is a push from formal agricultural education that there has to be something new and more advanced out there. So fewer and fewer growers know about traditional and place-based knowledge.”
Expanding Markets for Local Livestock Producers
Little Colorado Meats’ mission is to be an anchor in the development of a larger, resilient regional food system. Currently, LCM connects underserved and food-insecure communities to healthier and more accessible, locally produced meats while simultaneously expanding markets for local livestock producers. LCM sells beef products processed from local livestock under their own brand, which often makes its way to the local food supply via food banks, schools, and direct-to-consumer markets. LCM and its pioneering team is a model that can be integrated with other processing operations, potentially be replicated across the state, and demonstrates that local processing can keep ranchers ranching and feeding their neighbors. “While it may take many years, it is doable,” Karalea said.