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Nebraska ag director says USDA processor grants don’t go far enough

Nebraska’s ag director says USDA’s small meat processing grant program will have limited impacts because it doesn’t include custom-exempt facilities. “So, I think it’s a great idea to have grants to help that industry, but I think the USDA kind of missed the boat on their target at least in Nebraska.”

Steve Wellman says only processors who are federally inspected qualify for the $500 million dollar grant program. “We gave comments to USDA to expand that to custom-exempt facilities that don’t want to be federally inspected but they do need help, they do need some grant money.  They’ve been working night-and-day for the last 16 months from COVID-19 picking up some of the slack that the larger processers had with workforce issues.”

He says most of the processors are federally inspected but the smaller facilities work directly with consumers and livestock producers. “To my knowledge, there aren’t many custom-exempt facilities that want to be federally inspected,” Wellman says. “Right now, they are busy, they have as much work as they can take on.”

He says Nebraska is #2 in meat processing in the U.S. and #1 for red meat processing partly due to animals being processed at federally-inspected facilities. 

Steve Wellman, Nebraska Ag Director: