CANADA-MEAT PLANT RE-OPENS.
Tanana Valley Meats isn’t the only custom meat cutter in Fairbanks. Interior Alaska Fish Processors, Inc. and Santa’s Smokehouse has been doing custom meat cutting for more than 20 years in the Fairbanks area.
FAIRBANKS — With an experienced meatcutter imported from Minnesota, a bigger kill floor and a fresh perspective, a Fairbanks meat processing plant re-opened on Monday after a four-month closure to upgrade the facility.
"We’ve got a beef hanging and we’re doing stuff," Tanana Valley Meats plant manager Ginger McKee announced early Monday morning.
While Tanana Valley Meats can do custom work for private livestock and poultry owners, the plant is still waiting to receive its USDA certification, McKee said.
"We are hoping to have our USDA inspection on May 1, but that has not been confirmed," she said.
In the meantime, customers can place orders for assorted beef or pork packages ranging from 50 to 300 pounds that should be available sometime in June, assuming the plant gets its USDA certification. The plant can handle custom butchering of livestock or poultry, smoking and other custom orders.
"If you raise a pig in your backyard and you want it processed, you can bring it to us," McKee said. "If you want custom smoking done on chickens or turkeys, we can do it.
"If you clean out your freezer of last year’s caribou and moose, we can turn it into sausage, links and jerky," she said.
Once Tanana Valley Meats gets its USDA certification, the plant can start buying and butchering cattle and pigs for sale, McKee said.
That’s the plan, according to Scott Miller, president of Agricultural Investors LLC, a group of 18 investors that took over the struggling plant almost a year ago.
"These people want to assure there is a USDA red-meat processing plant in the area for farmed livestock and for game processing," Miller said. "Those will be our two main focuses."
Miller, a beef and elk rancher who owns Misty Mountain Farm in Delta Junction, is president of the board of directors. He also will be one of the local farmers that supplies the plant with meat to cut and sell. Miller recently purchased 100 feeder cattle out of Canada that were delivered on Sunday. They should be ready for market in a couple more months, he said.
"I’m gearing up my production and so are other farmers," Miller said. "I’m basically doubling the size of my operation."
Another investor, Todd Elsberry, is in the finishing stages of building a pig farm on Eielson Farm Road that will produce between 1,500 and 2,000 market hogs a year, Miller said.
Tanana Valley Meats is banking on an increased demand for natural and hormone-free meat, Miller said. All the meat sold out of the plant will be free of growth hormones, steroids and antibiotics, McKee said.
"People are more conscientious about where their food is coming from and what it has been fed," he said. "The fewer hands that touch that meat the better."
The plant will model its operation after Delta Meat & Sausage Co., the Interior’s only USDA certified meat processing plant, Miller said.
While she appreciated the compliment, Delta Meat & Sausage Co. owner Jeannie Pinkelman said running a USDA certified facility isn’t easy.
"Keeping up with all the rules and regulations is scary," Pinkelman said. "It’s a challenge."
Whether or not it’s financially feasible remains to be seen. Nobody is getting rich down at Delta Meat & Sausage Co., Pinkelman said.
"The bottom line is meat coming in from the Lower 48 is cheaper than Alaska farmers can grow it," she said.
Interior Fish
In addition to upgrading the old plant, Tanana Valley Meats is hoping to rebuild its reputation, both Miller and McKee said.
"Our main focus with this business is quality control and customer service," Miller said.
He admits the business plan is "a work in progress," but has no doubt there is a market big enough to support a local meat processing plant.
"We’re going to start out slow and see how well the market responds," Miller said.
