Tangletown Farm winners in state's mobile slaughterhouse auction

MONTPELIER – Central Vermont chickens beware: There’s a new slaughterhouse in town.

The Vermont Agency of Agriculture announced that Tangletown Farm in Middlesex was the big winner in the auction of a mobile poultry processing unit that was owned by the state.

The online auction, which drew a bit of media attention, ended with Lila Bennett and David Robb paying $61,000 for the unit.

The processing unit was designed and built in 2008 with a $93,000 investment from the Vermont Legislature and the Castanea Foundation.

The mobile unit, which hit the road in 2009, is the first of its kind for farmers to process poultry under state inspection right on the farm, the agency said.

"Animal welfare is at the heart of Tangletown Farm,” Lila Bennett said in a news release. “ This unit will allow us to expand our business, to maintain our high standards of quality, and to play a larger role in Vermont agriculture. With this unit we will be able to humanely slaughter, part, and package chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, and eventually lambs under the watchful eye of a Vermont state inspector.”

Sounds delish.

-- Thatcher Moats

Comments

[Miriam Jones]

Does no one see the cognitive dissonance involved in asserting, on the one hand, that animal welfare is paramount, and then proclaiming, on the other hand, that those animals will be murdered? Shall we assume that it's ethical to murder humans as long as we ensure they have happy, healthy, interesting lives before we do so? Only until humans realize that all species are entitled to handle their own lives, free from the domination we force upon them, can any of us even begin to claim that we care about "animal welfare."