Two Alberta ranchers are taking their pasture-raised meat business in an ambitious new direction with plans to build a $4.5 million federally inspected slaughter plant later this year.
Colleen and Dylan Biggs of Hanna have run TK Ranch Natural Meats since 1995, selling beef from their ranch directly to health food stores and grocery store chains.
Their cattle are slaughtered at a provincially inspected plant in Duchess, Alta. While this has given them more control over how the animals are killed and the meat processed, it has also limited sales because their provincially inspected meat can be sold only in Alberta.
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The solution is to kill their cattle in a federally inspected plant, but none of the large federal plants in Alberta conform to the strict rules the Biggs have put in place for their meat.
Among other things, the rules dictate that cattle must be killed in a low-stress manner and the meat hung for 21 days instead of the conventional 24 hours.
“We actually handle all of our cattle right to the kill to ensure that they’re not stressed when they get into that kill box,” Colleen Biggs said.
However, the federal plants’ line speeds are too fast for the Biggs.
“I understand why they need to be this way,” she said.
“They’re really focused on throughput because their overhead is so enormous, but they really can’t manage our program.”
The answer, which the Biggs and their partner Larry Lizotte have been working on for the past two years, is to build their own federally inspected plant.
An Ontario engineering firm has completed the preliminary design and Biggs said TK Natural Meats will likely build in Hanna, Alta.
She said financing has been elusive because conventional lenders are put off by plans to kill only 40 head a week, even though it’s far more than the four head a week that TK Ranch Natural Meats is now killing.
“We are not a conventional model so we shouldn’t be measured against a conventional model,” she said.
The partners met in late January with Shirley McClellan, Alberta agriculture minister and Hanna’s MLA, who promised to get them in touch with officials who can help with financing.
Biggs said the 10,000 sq. foot plant is expected to be operational by the end of October and employ 20 people.
It will kill cattle from the Biggs ranch and other ranches that conform to program rules. They eventually want the plant to be multi-species, and also hope to build a poultry slaughter plant and a separate facility to prepare cooked products.
TK Natural Meats is an offshoot of TK Ranch, a third-generation operation that the Biggs run with Dylan’s father, brother and sister-in-law.
In 1995, during a downturn in the cattle market, Colleen and Dylan decided to get into the meat business, catering to consumers who want beef that isn’t treated with antibiotics and artificial growth hormones and is raised in what they consider to be a humane and environmentally sustainable way.
They started selling to high-end restaurants, major health food stores in Calgary and the Safeway and Federated Co-operative grocery store chains.
The ranch runs 240 cows and bred heifers, with 100 animals going into the TK Ranch Natural Meats program annually.
Biggs said the company’s grocery store chain buyers have given verbal assurances that if the federal plant is built, they will sell TK Ranch Natural Meats across Western Canada.
As well, she said the company has received calls from wholesalers and retail and food service chains across North America interested in buying the company’s meat.
Depending on demand for products, the company may build more plants, possibly in Manitoba, Saskatchewan or British Columbia.
