Denver slaughterhouse ban "closes door to generational prosperity"

DENVER, CO., July 26, 2024 — A land grant institution, Colorado State University’s role is to provide factual information where it is lacking. This, and CSU’s commitment to agriculture and the state’s livestock producers, was the motivation behind Dr. Jennifer Martin’s white paper detailing the potential economic impacts should the proposed ban on slaughterhouses in the city and county of Denver pass.

The ballot initiative required signatures from only 2% of registered electors in Denver, a mere 8,940 signatures. The ballot question reads: Shall the voters of the City and County of Denver adopt an ordinance prohibiting slaughterhouses, and, in connection, beginning January 1, 2026, prohibiting the construction, maintenance, or use of slaughterhouses within the City; and requiring the City to prioritize residents whose employment is affected by the ordinance in workforce training or employment assistance programs?

Martin said Colorado agriculture plays a role outside of the state and globally, and so as scientists, the CSU team that compiled the study felt it was important to speak up in the absence of information.

“In this case, because we also felt strongly about the role that agriculture, livestock, and processing play in our home state, it was an intersection of that responsibility we feel from a land grant institution perspective, but also as researchers and scientists this is the space where we normally interact, where we connect people without knowledge, without information with knowledge and information that they can use, in this case to make decisions, or in others to inform their practices or change behaviors,” Martin said.

NO AG KNOWLEDGE OR CONNECTION

Martin said there are certainly dominoes, per se, that will fall if this were to pass. The lack of knowledge about the agriculture industry and the lack of connection most voters have to food production is particularly stark, she said, when voters are asked to vote on an issue like this.

“It speaks to the larger challenge of the lack of knowledge around where food comes from, the lack of connection many people, whether they’re urban or rural, have to food production and the impact that food production has outside of my hometown,” she said. “It’s easy for us to feel the local effects.”

Superior Farms is the business that would be impacted most initially and most dramatically, but Martin said it doesn’t stop there.

“The work that we do in Colorado or that (agriculturalists) do in Colorado doesn’t just stay in Colorado, it has global implications,” she said.

Martin said in her role at CSU, she has seen Superior Farms open their doors to CSU graduate students and researchers, and also provide the opportunity for consumers to connect with the industry through tours, helping the university reach their educational and research goals.

Martin, herself, is intrigued by the history of the plant, located near the Globeville neighborhood, and the meat packing industry in Denver. The historic photos of the Denver Union Stockyard Company are reminiscent of the days when carloads of fat cattle arrived in Denver with drovers aboard to care for them until they were sold. Commission men worked for F. E. Smith Livestock Brokers, Clay Robinson and Company, and the A. A. Blakley Commission Company, among others, sold cattle for the ranches to livestock buyers who primarily represented the packers that surrounded the stockyards. Once purchased, the cattle were pushed by hands on horseback across bridges that crossed what is now National Western Drive, and directly to the packers.

Among the most notable of the heyday Denver packers, the seven-story Swift & Company plant and the nine-story Armour plant. The Cudahy Packing Company, with an impressive electric sign that buzzed above a parking lot filled with 1930s model cars, locally owned Fryer Stillman, Pepper Packing Co., Western Packing Company, Colorado Packing & Provision Company and others were all bustling while the Omaha and Grant Smelter towered in the background.

Denver was a hub for hogs and sheep, especially once tunnels connected the Western Slope sheep and cattlemen to the Denver market. The feeding and packing industries, too, changed to include small to mid-sized packers and eventually the giants like Brazilian-owned JBS, which purchased Swift & Company in 2007.

“I love this history of it,” she said. “If you think about what was there, it’s special to think how they’ve preserved that footprint they’ve had for so long.”

EMPLOYEE OWNED

Martin said the culture surrounding meat processing and, specifically, the lamb industry is also rich and, to this day, serves a large number of ethnic markets around the country. Superior, which is employee owned, employs a largely Hispanic population, many of whom are generational agriculture workers.

“For many of the employees who work (in meat processing plants) that job is the doorway to prosperity and not just prosperity for themselves, but generational prosperity,” she said. “It’s the thing that moves people out of poverty or moving from a developing country and having a successful generational future here in the United States. That’s what I worry about.”

Martin said the closing of that door to generational prosperity is difficult to assign a number to, but she said it should be considered what will happen to an employee, who is an owner of the plant, and that is the future for them. The pride of ownership of the plant, she said, will be difficult to replicate with whatever other job they’re able to find if the plant closes.

“How do we overcome that impact because it’s going to be felt for generations to come,” she said.

For lamb producers in the West, Martin said the market access provided by Superior Farms will be nearly impossible to replicate. The state’s other large lamb processor does not offer fabrication, she said, so carcasses from Western producers would be sent to the East Coast to be packaged for consumers.

“It’s already really hard for consumers to find U.S. lamb and Colorado lamb, to put an exclamation point on it, but that is going to go away,” she said.

Martin said if lamb slaughter capacity is lost, it is unlikely that new capacity will be constructed given the required capital as well as the market signals and political signals at play in Colorado. It is, she said, more likely that the U.S. will simply import more lamb, forcing multi-generational U.S. lamb producers out of business as well. 

“If we get in a space where we inhibit innovation or we have legislation that inhibits innovation or food production, the message that sends to those companies looking to move here is interesting because it’s a counter message to something we’ve been known for for a long time,” she said.

She said Colorado and Denver itself has been instrumental and innovative in making paths to promote and place local foods in schools, hospitals, restaurants, markets and on the plates of consumers. This, she said, takes that away.

“It’s a pulse check moment for the City and County of Denver,” she said. “They set the tone for other communities across the state. What are our values and are we truly committed to local foods and food access and reducing food insecurity? If so, is a ballot initiative that impacts food production in a negative way the right thing to do? I would argue that it’s not but that the question that should be top of mind for Denver voters.”

Source: Rachel Gabel, The Fence Post Magazine and Western Ag Network