Black River's Processing Plant Is a Boon for Local Meat Industry

The 25 Berkshire-Chester pigs that recently arrived at 45 Fairbanks Road in North Springfield had lived a charmed life, at least for pigs: eating grain that had been hand-ground by their owner and waddling contentedly around 200 hilly acres near Enosburg Falls. And, after they met a quick end at a local slaughterhouse, the pigs became pioneers, of a sort.

Cut lengthwise, they were packed into carcass-size plastic bins and trucked to Black River Produce. This spring, the North Springfield-based fresh-food distributor took on a new role: meat processor. It was there, at Black River’s still-under-construction processing facility, that the pig sides were unloaded and rolled through the mostly empty building to the hanging room at its center. There, six men in white coats and rubber boots hung the sides on hooks and, one by one, got to work on them with saws and knives. In just a day and a half, the 25 pigs were transformed into piles of ham, loins, chops, trotters and heads.

Just as quickly, those parts disappeared in something of a pork diaspora: bellies and ham were sent to Vermont Smoke and Cure; other bellies to the chef of Craigie On Main in Cambridge, Mass. Legs went to Rhode Island’s Daniele to be made into prosciutto. Various cuts were trucked to chefs around Vermont (“One chef buys all of the heads,” says production manager Dominic Barone). Tenderloins and other chops were sealed, marked with a Black River Meat label and shelved in the company’s enormous cooler, destined to be sold at retail stores around Vermont and New Hampshire.

Though Black River Produce’s new plant — which also processes seafood — is barely three months old, its cutters work with intensity and speed, making this place a potential game changer for the local meat industry. Vermont has long struggled with a bottleneck at the slaughtering and processing levels, a frustrating challenge for farmers who might otherwise grow their herds to meet the rising demand for local meats.

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