Knott, mobile slaugherhouse seems to have board’s blessing

By SEAN CLOUGHERTY
Managing Editor

LEONARDTOWN, Md. — A proposal for a mobile meat processing facility in St. Mary’s County received tentative approval for conditional use from the county’s Board of Appeals.
In an informal poll at its Feb. 9 meeting, all board members said they were in favor of the project as presented and would vote to approve it.
A formal vote is expected at the board’s next meeting on Feb. 23.
The proposal, put forth by Johnny Knott Jr., a St. Mary’s County farmer, came under heavy scrutiny at the last two board meetings, mainly by neighbors of the Mechanicsville property where Knott would keep the mobile trailer and do the meat cutting and packaging.
Slaughter of the animals would take place on other farms.
The mobile processing facility would be the first USDA-inspected meat processing facility in Southern Maryland and the first of its kind on the East Coast.
Last week, Knott said the next steps for the project were to secure a permit for the septic system the trailer would use to store gray water from processing but didn’t yet have a clear timeline of when a mobile unit could arrive at the farm.
Since the Board of Appeals meeting of Feb. 9, Knott said the project has gotten a lot of attention from people interested in getting local meat processed.
“I’ve had a lot of phone calls from people wanting to know when I’m going to go to work,” Knott said. “I’ve even gotten calls from people in Lancaster, Pa., who are thinking about copying this idea up there.”
At the Feb. 9 meeting, Michael Nagy, an attorney representing several neighbors in opposition, said the proposal did not meet the criteria to be protected by the county’s Right to Farm ordinance and should be considered an industrial use rather than agricultural and therefore not permitted in a agricultural zone.
“The use is not what we’re objecting to, it’s the location,” Nagy said.
Other arguments by Nagy centered around the width of Reeves Road not being wide enough to accommodate the mobile slaughter trailer and another vehicle, added traffic to Reeves Road, animal waste, or drop weight, coming back to the farm after slaughter and the feasibility of the project would force Knott to expand the business to more than one mobile trailer.
Knott’s attorney, Christopher Longmore, said Knott would keep to one mobile unit and during the meeting the board clarified that any expansion would require Knott to go through the permitting process again.
John Groeger, deputy director of the St. Mary’s County Department of Public Works and Transportation, said the road was 18-feet wide, the standard width for roads in the county, except for one spot where it measured about 17 feet.
Taking into account all the new traffic from the mobile slaughter operation the width of the road and the entrance to the farm, Groeger said DPW approved of the project.
Lucille Walker, who is a consultant for the Southern Maryland Agriculture Commission and the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland, is working with Knott on the project and said they expect many of the farmers to compost the drop weight on their farms to avoid a disposal fee.
Whatever waste comes back to Knott’s farm would be stored in USDA-approved containers, Walker said.
Waste from cutting and processing the meat will be stored in latching metal containers until picked up periodically by Valley Protein for disposal.
Walker said Knott plans to be able to process about four beef carcasses a day with a capacity of six a day and process no more than 18 carcasses in a week.
“The Knott proposal is of a small scale,” Walker said. “It is a cutting and wrapping operation on Reeves Road. It is not a slaughter operation.”
Meat processing in the mobile unit would be done under the supervision of a USDA inspector and in accordance to USDA standards.
In his closing, Longmore asked board members to consider the proposal in terms of all the other agriculture uses Knott could explore.
“There are lots of ways this property could be used and we feel that’s a fair prism to use when considering this particular use,” Longmore said.
At the urging of County Attorney George Sparling, the board agreed to have a formal statement of fact on the proposal drawn up and voted on at its Feb. 23 meeting.