In 2017, the U.S. meat industry processed 32.2 million cattle into 26.3 billion pounds of beef, according to the North American Meat Institute. While a lot of that beef comes from large meat processing plants, much of the cattle is raised and processed by smaller family farms and processors like D&S Quality Beef.
The family-owned beef processor opened last month on County Road 58 in the Geraldine community, and company president Bobby Satterfield said business has been booming ever since.
“I think it’s going to be a blessed business for us,” Satterfield said. “We’re looking for a great opportunity for years to come to hopefully serve the community in the way it should be served, and hopefully raise some good cows so everybody can have some good meat.”
D&S has been selling meat in the storefront of their processing plant and online. However, Satterfield said he hopes to expand into other towns and states as soon as he can, all in effort to source the top cuts of choice beef.
“We sold the first one we put online,” Satterfield said. “Local people came and we had more than we could ever think about ordering [beef].”
Starting the company seemed like a natural progression for the owners, which includes Satterfield’s wife, Vickie, and business partner Chris Dowdey, since they already raised their own cattle. They not only wanted to provide fresh, locally-sourced beef but also fill a need for custom cattle processing, which has been growing a backlog ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, Satterfield said. D&S has already received enough customer orders to keep it busy through next spring.
Currently, D&S processes more than a dozen cows per week, which is a mixture of company-raised and customer-raised cattle.
When a cow is brought to their plant, Satterfield said it can’t stay for more than a day before being processed. Once inside, the cow is stunned with a .25-caliber plunger gun to the head and then hung upside down from the ceiling where it is then bled out and cleaned. A saw then cuts the animal in half in about 20 seconds before the meat is hung for up to two weeks inside the refrigerator room. Satterfield said they can store up to 150 head of beef at a time.
Starting in January 2021, he said D&S would be inspected and certified federally by the USDA. Currently, the company is certified by the state.
December 05, 2020 at 02:10AM
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