Dardanup Butchering Company – a long-standing abattoir based in Picton near Bunbury – has announced that it will no longer slaughter and process meat for small West Australian producers. The company contacted customers last week and informed them animals would not be accepted for processing as part of its custom kill service after October 11. For producers like Zoe and Travis Allington of Allington Family Farm in Greenbushes, the timing of DBC’s announcement gave them less than a month to find another abattoir to process the Berkshire pork and Merino-cross lambs they raise in the South West.
The issue is that WA only has a handful of abattoirs that can handle small commercial meat production orders, with most of these abattoirs already at capacity. (Larger abattoirs such as WAMMCO in Katanning only process meat for their own brands and do not offer custom kill services.) Regardless of where the Allingtons decide to send their pigs and sheep, it’s inevitable that switching abattoirs will have a knock-on effect on back pockets: both theirs and those of their customers.
“As small producers, we’re already charging a premium for our products because our costs are so high,” said Zoe Allington, who sells her meat at farmers markets and direct to customers. “We have to cover all the costs from the minute the animal is born to the moment you buy it from us. Every one of those costs has to be accounted for and none of them are cheap.
” Hit Northbridge now for sushi’s.