WINSLOW — For 110 days after Scott Ridenhoure and his three partners broke ground for the B&R Meat Processing plant last June, their plans were propelled by two words: deer season.
“We knew it was going to be hard to do in four months,” Ridenhoure said. “But we knew if we didn’t open [the] first day of deer season, we were going to lose thousands of dollars. Because if that first guy on the first morning pulled up, and we weren’t open, word would’ve spread like wildfire, and we would’ve lost tons of business.”
When that first customer did show up with a freshly killed deer on Sept. 28, 2013, Ridenhoure — along with his father, Earl Ridenhoure, and cousins Darrin and Eric Burnett — was prepared.
“I can’t say we were 100 percent ready, but we were open,” Ridenhoure laughed.
Since opening the 4,200-square-foot facility, Ridenhoure and his partners have gone on to receive U.S. Department of Agriculture certification, which allows them to sell butchered meat portions to grocers, restaurants and other retail businesses. According to a database maintained by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, there are 67 USDA-certified processing locations in Arkansas, 30 of which are also slaughter facilities.
B&R is one of only two USDA-certified slaughter facilities in Washington County. The other — George’s Processing Inc. in Springdale — primarily handles poultry.
The USDA certification is what will keep B&R solvent between large game seasons, Ridenhoure said. While the shop took in an average of 50 deer a day last November, during the two-week modern rifle portion of the season, deer, bear and elk can’t be hunted in the state for most of the calendar year.
“It’s the reason we’re able to keep three or four people working here all the time,” Ridenhoure said. “Otherwise, we’d be down to just one or two people.”
Ridenhoure said B&R typically takes in about six “custom” jobs — cows or hogs taken in for slaughter and processing by their owners for private consumption and not for resale — a month. By comparison, B&R is now processing eight to 10 animals a week for restaurants, grocers and other retailers requiring USDA-certified beef or pork.
The shop has also worked to attract clientele with additional concerns for the ethical treatment of animals before slaughter. Ridenhoure said after several customers asked if B&R had been audited by Animal Welfare Approved, a nonprofit organization headquartered near Washington, D.C., he contacted one of the organization’s regional auditors.
Animal Welfare Approved is a program of the Animal Welfare Institute, a 501(c)3 organization that reported about $14.8 million in assets in 2012, according to the most recent Internal Revenue Service documents available. The organization does not charge farmers or facility owners for inspections or certification.
Andrew Gunther, program director with Animal Welfare Approved, said the organization concentrates on establishing relationships with both growers and processors, to establish ethical conditions for animals from “birth to slaughter.”
“We need to see mama, and we need to see the facility where the animal dies,” Gunther said.
“We won’t certify a plant unless they’re working with one of our farmers,” Gunther said. “It’s about having a good life, and a very quick end to that life, before you become a pork chop or rib-eye.”
In early June, the B&R facility was inspected by Charlie Hester, one of more than a dozen auditors who inspect farms and other facilities for Animal Welfare Approved throughout the United States. Gunther said there are about 150 processing facilities carrying the organization’s seal throughout the country, and “three or four” such facilities in Arkansas.
Ridenhoure said he felt sure the facility would pass Hester’s inspection because the USDA inspection itself is highly stringent. Both processes carry many of the same criteria — no sharp objects in areas where animals might cut or scar themselves, adequate light and water, and a reliable method of causing near-instantaneous death to cause as little anxiety and suffering in the animal as possible.
John Swenson, co-owner of Blacksheep Ranch in Winslow, said stress levels in animals — especially occurring near the time of death — have a detectable effect on the quality and flavor of the meat after slaughter.
“If you’ve got a stressed animal, it’s going to change the hormone level in the animal, and it’s going to change the taste of the meat,” Swenson said.
Swenson and his wife, Catherine, raise approximately 30 sheep at a time on about 22 acres of pastureland. Swenson said the sheep are slaughtered before reaching 1 year of age, the point at which lamb typically becomes mutton.
“Animal welfare’s a big concern for us for a couple of reasons,” Swenson said. “We’re very concerned about our sheep. We love ’em up, and we name every one of them. But the biggest concern we have is the time of death.”
Ryan Craig, who operates Adams’ Acres on Clear Creek, a 192-acre farm west of Fayetteville, said he approached Ridenhoure while seeking his own certification through Animal Welfare Approved about a month ago. After touring the B&R facility, Craig said he was certain the shop would pass the organization’s audit process.
Craig said that although the USDA certification is the legal standard for retail sales of meat and poultry, he felt that political influence wielded by large agricultural interests had led the agency to permit some practices that weren’t necessarily healthy.
“Consumers kind of have a romantic notion of what ‘free range’ livestock is,” Craig said. “Lobbyists make sure the language is diluted enough that it doesn’t cause the agricultural industrial complex to really do anything but market their products differently.”
When deer season returns, Ridenhoure hopes to double B&R’s workload, taking in 100 animals a day. Eventually, he would like to expand the shop’s capacity, adding additional cooler space to hang more sides of beef to accommodate more USDA orders, Ridenhoure said. In the meantime, he hopes to continue attracting business from small farmers trying to meet the elevated standards of their own customers.
“If [the customers] require it, I’m a fool not to do it,” Ridenhoure said. “Some of them sell at farmers markets, and they like to put this information on their meat when they sell it.”