January 7, 2009

By Sarah Lemon

Mail Tribune

Farm-To-Table Meat

It isn't a lack of skill, passion or finances that's keeping local meat off tables at Standing Stone Brewing Co. in Ashland.

After empowering his chef and two kitchen assistants to learn the art of butchering lamb at a local farm, restaurant owner Alex Amarotico realized that the meat couldn't be used in food service. Long-standing regulations by the U.S Department of Agriculture prohibit the sale of uncertified meats in restaurants.

"The way the mainstream institution handles animals and meat is against our grain," Amarotico says.

So the restaurateur who's made environmental sustainability a business philosophy wants to remove the last barrier to serving organic, free-range, truly local meat by building a USDA-certified slaughterhouse.

"The whole reason for us wanting to do this is to know how our animals are dealt with," Amarotico says. "We thought we should put our money were our mouth is."

Amarotico says he believes he can accomplish in one year what others have worked almost a decade to achieve. Funding has been the main barrier to establishing a local USDA-certified slaughtering facility, says Wendy Siporen, executive director of THRIVE, a nonprofit coalition of local businesses. The closest slaughterhouse inspected by federal officials is in Roseburg, too far for the tastes of Rogue Valley "locavores."

"It's not an issue unique to our area or our state," says Melissa Matthewson, a faculty member of Oregon State University's small farms program.

"It just doesn't work out financially when you have to take your animals that far."

Small-scale farms, like Afton Field Farm of Corvallis, have found solutions, which will be explained during a free OSU Extension lecture on Thursday. In addition to processing and marketing strategies, farmers Tyler and Alicia Jones will discuss their managed, intensive grazing methods learned from Joel Salatin, profiled in the best-selling "Omnivore's Dilemma."

"Definitely, USDA processing will be a big topic of discussion," Matthewson says.

It's a topic all-too familiar to Cameron Callahan, co-owner of The Butcher Shop in Eagle Point. Callahan says he hopes to make good this year on a 10-year plan to obtain full USDA certification for killing, cutting and wrapping. Obtaining processing certification several months ago, Callahan says he now needs about $185,000 to purchase a mobile slaughter truck and hopes an Extension grant will secure the funds. USDA has been supportive of his efforts, Callahan adds.

"We got to do it."

Callahan may have a race on his hands with Amarotico, who says the USDA's certification process seems simple enough and the construction hardly a challenge.

"That's the easy part," says Amarotico, who worked as a construction contractor before learning the brewer's trade.

With the economy "spiraling out of control," Amarotico says he sees just more reasons to take his restaurant's food supply into his own hands. He says he needs about $500,000 to set up a USDA-certified slaughtering and processing operation, adding that Standing Stone's sales were up about 8 percent over the summer. Citywide, restaurant receipts are down by about the same percentage, says Lee Tuneberg, finance director for the City of Ashland.

Yet there's no shortage of local farmers willing to dedicate their entire operation to Standing Stone, which would save money by cutting out middle-man suppliers, Amarotico says. True to its sustainabillity ethic, the restaurant would use entire animals in its cooking while recycling food waste for compost and spent grain from brewing as livestock feed. The micro-brewery already trades its spent grain to an Applegate farm for produce, he says.

Other Ashland restaurants like Geppetto's have close farm ties, but securing a supply of local meat is "taking it to another level," Siporen says.

"THRIVE-member restaurants have been asking for this," she says. "It's also about humanely and healthily raised meats."

Standing Stone's chef Eric Bell agrees and hangs his hat on one attribute of local meat that restaurants and their customers simply can't dispute.

"When an animal is raised organically, in a good way, they taste better."

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