The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - Dayton business owners Jim and Connie Westergreen have big news for small ranchers in Columbia and Walla Walla counties. The couple will soon expand their meat processing operations to include a USDAinspected butchering facility in Dayton and a second retail shop in Walla Walla.

The owners of Dayton Cut & Wrap, on Main Street, are working with the Port of Columbia to build a small slaughterhouse on Cameron Street in the empty, Portowned lot already zoned for industrial uses between TEMA, Inc. and Rock Hill Concrete. The facility will process not only beef but also pork and lamb.

"To me, it's an extremely appropriate location," said Port Manager Jennie Dickinson, who added that calls for construction bids will go out this week.

The Westergreens want the abattoir (which is just a French word for "slaughterhouse" but one Dickinson prefers to use for this business model) to be running on Cameron Street, by county fair time, or early September. Fair time is one of the busiest seasons for the Westergreens.

"So we're moving very quickly," Dickinson said. "I think this is the fastest project we've ever pulled together."

The Westergreens, who purchased the 50-year-old Cut & Wrap business in Dayton a little over five years ago, took their processingplant idea to the Port just two months ago, but Jim Westergreen said it's an idea he's had tossing around inside his head for the last two years or so.

It's an idea whose time has come. Local cattlemen have by and large been left behind in the national Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Ranchers today recognize that modern con- sumers are demanding more organic, natural foods - but in the meat industry, fulfilling this demand gets a bit sticky.

"As things stand right now, people have to buy the animal live and have it butchered by a processor like Cut & Wrap or Haun's Meats (in Stateline)," said Dayton rancher Tanya Patton. "Even if they share the cost of the animal, it's tough for most people to spend $500 for a cut and wrapped quarter of a beef, and not many people have adequate freezer space to store 100 pounds or more of meat."

But for ranchers to butcher and then sell their own pasture-raised meat retail by the pound, they have to - by law - have the processing done in a USDA-inspected facility. And the closest one is in Basin City, Wash., 30 miles north of Pasco.

"A facility right here in Dayton is exciting," said Patton, who raises cattle with her family on the South Patit east of Dayton. "Now there will be a lot more options for small growers."

Jim and Connie Westergreen are quick to reassure customers, however, that they will continue to do custom meat work. In fact, there is more excitement in store. The Westergreens are poised to purchase the former Thundering Hooves meat facility, previously known as Kwik Freeze, on Isaacs Avenue in Walla Walla. Thundering Hooves shut down its operations on March 14.

There ranchers will be able to sell their meats retail, and the Westergreens plan to bring custom meat work back to the location too.

In honor of the big expansion, the Westergreens plan to change the name of their operations to Tucannon Meats. This new name will cover business at the abattoir as well as the two retail stores (in Dayton and Walla Walla).

"The stores are the whole reason for the processing plant," said Gary Grendahl, a local cattle rancher with the Starbuck-based cooperative Tucannon Beef, LLC, and Jim Westergreen's stepfather. "The idea is to open a couple more stores in the future. But without the USDAinspected plant, we couldn't have the retail shops."

At the May 11 meeting of the Port of Columbia, Dickinson and the Westergreens hope to have all the pieces of the plan together, financing in line and bids ready.

Dickinson, who announced the project to guests at the Blue Mountain Station groundbreaking ceremony last Friday, said she's already fielding concerns from a few community members.

She wanted to add that the facility on Cameron Street, which will be located across the street from a residential area, will be small and will not have a feed lot. Animals will be delivered and processed immediately.

She also explained that the Westergreens will not do any rendering on site. The rendering process, which uses animal by-products for the production of tallow, grease, and high-protein meat and bone meal, is often where meat processing facilities create an odor that disagrees with people, Dickinson said.

"And offal will be stored in a temperature-controlled room and hauled away from Dayton, as they currently do at their Main Street shop," she said.

For more information about the project, contact Jim Westergreen at Dayton Cut & Wrap, (509) 382-4371.