The new butcher

I take my chickens to Eli Reiff, in Mifflintown, who is a very savvy local poultry processor. He gives talks at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture conferences, has a mobile poultry processing station that he can bring to the small farms to process their poultry thus reducing the heat and travel stress on the birds, and he can talk a mean game about the problems with big poultry without romanticizing the difficulty of chicken farming or food production. I am sure there are many other small-scale butchers in this country, but they are a diminishing lot as the large processors stake their claims to whole areas of the country where travel is cheap and easy. In rural Pennsylvania, for example, the area around Lancaster is well served by large processors (well-served may be an inaccurate description given what happens in large processing plants, so let's just revise that as monopolized by those large processors), but the northern, more hilly tier of the state has precious few butchers. The onus on the small processor is to make his or her work known to the new crop of poultry growers as well as the existing small farmers. An example of how this is being done is below: the HomeGrown Poultry company got a mention in an article in the Boise Weekly on keeping chickens as unusual pets, and when I went to their website, I found this explanation for precisely why small poultry processors in our local area are so crucial in this new food system.
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HomeGrown Poultry prides itself on being the first state-approved poultry and rabbit processor in the state of Idaho. Poultry processed in our new 1920-square foot facility can be resold anywhere with the state of Idaho. We are pending approval from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to resell rabbits within the state. HomeGrown Poultry has been in business since 2003, owned and operated by experienced poultry growers.

We believe growing food for yourself and your family is true food security.

We believe locally-grown food is more nutritious, saves fossil fuel, and supports local farmers. It is true homeland security.

We support local food systems - all the processes that go into producing and distributing food - whether they've developed haphazardly or with careful planning - from breeding crop seeds, to fishing, to raising cattle, to processing food, shipping, storing and selling it.

We support sustainable agriculture - growing food and fibers in a ways that don't compromise the ability of future generations to do the same.

The food supply chains we depend on have been growing longer and more complicated - and this has created new vulnerabilities. Food does not just pass from farm to market to table anymore. The links of these chains pass through more hands, more labs, more companies, more processing facilities, more countries, etc. Too much of this stretching food supply chain is out of sight, and out of public control. We either need to shorten the food supply chains by buying more locally produced food, or do a much better job of overseeing and managing them through all their twists and turns. We believe HomeGrown Poultry has an important role in this system.

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Rhetoricians could make much of this passage, because it is such a good example of how the rhetoric of terrorism is being adapted (productively, one hopes) by local foods activists. Of course, that is if you can call keeping your own chickens activism, as I think Grace Lee Boggs might well do: in a recent interview with Bill Moyers she talked about drawing her hope for the future as an activist from the upsurge of local gardens she saw being created.