USDA Maps Detail U.S. Local Meat Processing Facilities

Many questions have come to my office asking about direct marketing meat instead of selling their animals at auction or contracting them with different companies.  There are lots of hoops to jump through to become a successful direct marketer of meat products.  One of the first hoops to look for and to identify is where are you going to have your animals slaughtered.  Not all meat processers will process all types of animals.

To aid in identifying a processor for your operation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has released a preliminary study to identify areas in the U.S. where small livestock and poultry producers are concentrated but may not have access to a nearby slaughter facility. The data creates a county-by-county view of the continental United States, indicating the concentration of small farms raising cattle, hogs and pigs, and chicken, and also noting the location of nearby state slaughter facilities and small and very small federal slaughter establishments.  To view this information click here.