Micro Abattoirs – Relocalise Northern Rivers

In our quest to build our local food system, we are now collaborating with Josh Wellman from Wellco Advisory, Laticia Braving from Vitality Farms Northern Rivers and other local food advocates to bring a focus on our local meat supply.
As we are all too aware, service-kill options are gradually being withdrawn from small local farmers, and not just in this region but across the country.
The solution is re-establishing the network of micro abattoirs of times gone by, or amending food safety regulations to permit field harvest of livestock. There are numerous regulatory obstacles at the federal, state and local levels. However there is a growing movement of small producers across the country working to make these changes happen.

On 10 September 2026 we held our first public meeting to discuss abattoir options for small-medium producers. Josh presented the 5 main options:

Mobile slaughter + external licensed processing: Take slaughter to farms; transfer carcasses to a fixed licensed processing facility.
Mobile slaughter + processing on-site: Bring slaughter and primary processing capability to compliant host sites.
Shared fixed micro-abattoir: Start with one species and design the pathway for later expansion.
Private on-farm micro-abattoir: One owner develops and operates a fixed facility, potentially integrated with their own brand.
Field harvest: Slaughter and evisceration in the field, swift transport of body to cold facility, like current wild animal harvest. (AS 4464:2007)

In June 2026 we made some important connections for the local food movement at a micro abattoir workshop in Grafton. Organised by Debrah Novak, Clarence Valley Councillor and head of Clarence Valley Food Inc, we heard from Glen Chapman, cattle farmer and committee member of the Agroecology and Food Sovereignty Alliance.

That morning, farmers and butchers from the mid north coast and the northern rivers learned of the progress made by advocates for small local meat producers to enable the construction of micro abattoirs (including mobile solutions) in Victoria.

An important research project outlines the urgency of the work required and the path forward for enabling small producers to continue providing for their local communities.

The main goals of micro abattoirs include:

reducing travel times, which are of course stressful on the animals
giving farmers greater control over ensuring highest standards for treatment of animals
giving customers guaranteed traceability of their meat
reducing inputs such as antibiotics
ensuring local food security by removing reliance on centralised industrial systems that are increasingly removing their service from small local farmers

(due to the much smaller scale) enabling far superior waste management, which in fact leads to the improvement of farm soils

Our first step for this campaign was to distribute a survey by Josh Wellman of Wellco Advisory in July-August 2026 to livestock producers across the region to gauge whether their current needs are being met by abattoirs and if not, whether they would use micro abattoirs if any were available. We also asked producers about their primary concerns.

Fifty eight producers responded and the key findings were:

96% would definitely or probably use a local micro-abattoir
50% say access could allow them to increase production
66% would consider being a shareholder/member
74% listed animal welfare as their chief concern
71% want more meat kept in the region

Let’s create the region of our dreams

Abattoir alternatives for small-medium livestock producers

First public meeting

Join our monthly meetings to discussion the options

Background

Survey of livestock producers

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Northern Rivers NSW AU