Slaughterhouse plan on track
Toolbox
By BOB HOOKWAY VALLEY NEWS WRITER - Published: September 25, 2009
WOODSTOCK — Planning and Zoning Administrator Michael Brands is less than thrilled with local businessman Frank Abballe's plan to truck as many as 500 animals per week into town to be slaughtered. But Brands acknowledges there's not much he or other town officials can do about it.
There are no town regulations that would prevent Abballe from setting up a feedlot and slaughterhouse at his former water buffalo farm on Church Hill Road in South Woodstock.
"It's all up to the state of Vermont. This is agricultural use and is exempt from all local permitting. At present, if someone wanted to open a pig farm on the common, that would be allowed," Brands said.
He said that the Vermont regulations established in the 1990s to promote agriculture overrode local ordinances which, as far as Brands is concerned, were not "thought through completely" before they were enacted. He said it's not clear if Abballe will need an Act 250 permit to change the property's use.
"All the planners are totally against it," Brands said of Abballe's project that could be in business by spring. He said he foresaw a number of problems, including unhappy neighbors and an increase in traffic on the rural dirt road. The property is about a half-mile off Route 106. The other end of the road is some four miles away in Woodstock Village.
Abballe, a 50-year-old Toronto native, said this week his Buffala di Vermont — one of three known water buffalo dairy farms in the United States — is closed and he's in the process of shipping the remainder his 240 head of stock to another farm of his in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. Most of the milk was processed in making cheese and yogurt.
Abballe said a big part of his decision to shut down the cheese and yogurt-making operation was the difficulty he had coming up with a local supply of the proper feed for the water buffalo. "Corn is a diet for the right mozzarella; I can't find feed," he said.
So Abballe is investing another $700,000 in the local farm and will use his former milking parlor for slaughtering. What had been the creamery area will become the cutting room. The animals primarily will be lambs he trucks in from a Pennsylvania supplier, and he expects to keep 6,000 at a time on the 18.5-acre farm, fattening them to 140 pounds or so over two months before slaughtering them.
"That way, there's no stress to the animal; we're not going to slaughter them right away," he said.
The slaughterhouse plan has certainly been a topic of conversation among neighbors, including Alita Wilson on Church Hill Road.
"We live fairly close, but we're not down water or downwind. But we're certainly concerned. The neighbors have not talked to him as a group, but this seems more like agribusiness than agriculture," Wilson said.
Wilson also said that she is worried about the possible impact on Kedron Valley Pond and its feeder, Kedron Valley Brook, two popular spots among local residents. She said traffic is another factor neighbors are discussing.
"That part of the road is incredibly narrow at this time of the year, let alone winter," she said.
Wilson said she understands the need for slaughterhouses in Vermont, but is not sure Abballe's property is the right place for what he's planning.
"I don't know if it's sustainable. We just want the answers," she said.
Ben Sanford, chief financial officer of Staffing Solutions, an agency on that road that provides temporary workers, said yesterday he didn't like the sound of the project and was worried about its impact.
"We're going to have to look into that," he said.
In addition to about 300 of his own lambs per week he'll cut and ship for the retail and restaurant trade in Boston and New York, Abballe said he's arranging to process for others an additional 200 to 300 head weekly, including cattle and pigs.
"There so much demand for that, I'm expecting 48 or 49 percent of my business to be custom slaughtering. This is going to be a state-of-the-art facility."
Abballe said, for example, he'll install an advanced system of bedding that will require manure to be removed only once a year. The operation will include a smokehouse and employ about 10 experienced workers whom, Abballe said, he expects to bring in from out of state.
Mike Mitchell, who works in meat safety and enforcement for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets, said Abballe began his permit process this summer and said all nine of the state's present slaughterhouses for red meat are subject to the agency's close daily oversight, including sanitation, labeling and handling of the meat.
Mitchell, who could not be reached for this story, said an inspector is always on site during the slaughtering process.
Regarding opposition from town officials or neighbors, Abballe said he hopes that doesn't materialize, but he expects the business to be up and running by spring.
"I'm finalizing all my permits. I'm not trying to hurt anybody. People come to Vermont for a holiday; I came to work," he said.
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