Oregon slaughter facilities face challenges

After roughly four decades in operation, the Custom Meat Co. of Eugene, Ore., shut down on June 17.  While employees and clients still hope the mobile custom slaughter and meat processing company will be bought and re-opened, they acknowledge the business fell into disarray after owner Victor Hastings succumbed to cancer in January.  Unless an investor takes over the company, Keith Cooper, who raises hogs at nearby Sweetbriar Farms, is worried about traveling much greater distances to process carcasses.  “I probably couldn’t have existed or grown my business to the extent I had without the assistance of Custom Meat or Vic Hastings,” he said. The problems encountered by the Custom Meat Co. provide an example of the pressures faced by Oregon’s slaughter and meat processing facilities.  As the owners of such companies retire or die, finding replacements is difficult — both because their skills are rare and because fewer people are willing to do such work, said Lauren Gwin, an Oregon State University professor and director of the Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network.  “It is a brutal job to go out and kill things all day long,” Gwin said. “It’s not the kind of thing younger people are interested in doing.”