New poultry processing plant open for independent producers

By Debbie Roos
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2008

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Siler City, NC - Chaudhry Halal Meats just opened their brand new poultry processing plant in Siler City in Chatham County. This is the state's only USDA-inspected poultry processing plant for independent producers. The plant will process chicken, turkey, duck, geese, quail, and rabbit. The original red meat plant continues to process beef, goat, and lamb.

The Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension organized an Open House for Chaudhry Halal Meats earlier this month. You can see photos and learn more about the plant by visiting the Growing Small Farms
website.

Last year I received a grant to do a Niche Market Poultry Production Project from the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, a national information resource for value-added agriculture led by a consortium of universities including Iowa State University, Kansas State University and the University of California. For our project we collaborated with Growers' Choice and American Livestock Breeds Conservancy to do a three day niche market poultry production conference last fall, where we brought in Frank Reese of Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch (GSTR) in Kansas. GSTR is the national leader in the reintroduction of purebred "heritage" turkeys to the consumer, and they have developed a regional hatchery with a network of growers to cooperatively raise and market poultry.

We used some of the grant funds to develop Grower Guidelines for Poultry Processing. These were developed by local farmers and Growers' Choice members Judy Lessler and Noah Ranells. This is a wonderful and helpful document that everyone should read, whether you have processed birds two times or 20. Noah and Judy also developed guidelines for working specifically with Chaudhry Halal Meats. Both of these documents can be found here.

Please let me know if you find these guidelines helpful or have suggestions for improvements.

Finally, Weaver Street Market is seeking local producers to raise chickens and turkeys to supply their three stores in Carrboro, Hillsborough, and Southern Village. They would like to find producers within a 50 mile radius of Chaudhry's plant in Siler City. You can learn more about this opportunity and download their draft production guidelines here.