There is certainly enough local meat being raised in Maine to go around. The problem is that most of it leaves the state to be processed.
Analysts with the Reinvestment Fund, a public-policy driven lending institution based in Baltimore, presented findings of a recent study geared toward optimizing the state’s red meat supply chain to a packed house at the More Maine Meat Workshop held at the 76th Annual Maine Agriculture Trade Show in Augusta earlier in January. The bottleneck to getting more sustainable red meat on the menu in Maine is a shortage of meat-cutting facilities and butchering talent that can efficiently bring local beef, pork and lamb from the pasture to the plate here.
In the study, demand for local meat was based on USDA sales numbers. Supply was based on data pulled from a Dun & Bradstreet business registration of local farms. Researchers noted that supply was likely underestimated as many smaller farms are not included in those numbers. But even with the lowball estimate on the supply side, researchers found that the existing meat-processing facilities in Maine today can process only a third of the animals that local farmers can raise.
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