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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Tuesday, June 3, 2003

Slaughterhouse ready to open on Moloka'i

By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer

The cows will be staying home once a new slaughterhouse opens on Moloka'i Saturday.

The event culminates about 12 years of planning, $1.5 million in county, state and federal money and hours of labor donated to the slaughterhouse's owner and operator, the Moloka'i Livestock Cooperative.

It should help solve two main problems for ranchers and residents in the Islands — eliminating the need to export cattle to the Mainland for processing, and making more fresh meat available on local store shelves.

Currently, all livestock for commercial use are shipped to the Mainland for processing, while most meat is shipped in.

"That's a lot of loss — both in tax revenues and jobs," said Glenn Teves, a co-op adviser and county extension agent for the University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. "That's the key, keeping money and jobs in Hawai'i."

Plans are for the 2,000-square-foot facility near the airport in Kaunakakai to employ three workers who will slaughter cattle and pigs. Teves hopes the slaughterhouse will allow schools and other island organizations to use locally-grown meat.

The island's old slaughterhouse was closed after the discovery of bovine tuberculosis led to the destruction of all of Moloka'i cattle from 1985 to 1987. Today, the island has about 3,500 to 4,000 head of cattle, Teves said.

Use of the slaughterhouse also should allow for better tracking of animal disease on the island and prevent food-borne illnesses that can result when animals are slaughtered in a backyard.

"So if we don't bring in the diseases, we shouldn't have much trouble," he said. "Our isolation is our advantage."

The total number of cattle on Hawai'i ranches was down 2,000 head to a total of 150,000 on Jan. 1, according to the Hawai'i Agricultural Statistics Service.

Donald Martin, state agricultural statistician, said the state's cattle inventory has fallen over several years because drought conditions have cut into available pasture.

"There's no feed out there so they had to start cutting back the herd sizes," he said.

Contact Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8093.