The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse: Building a Humane Chicken-Processing Unit to Strengthen Your Local Food System

If you’re raising poultry for meat and lack easy access to a humane slaughterhouse, a mobile slaughter and processing unit may be the solution. Ali Berlow shows you how to build a unit that accommodates all types of poultry and can easily be moved to any location, making it a great cooperative investment for a community of small-scale farmers. Covering the mechanics of construction, sanitation, safety, and permitting processes, this guide shows you how a mobile slaughterhouse can make your poultry operation more self-sufficient.

Ali Berlow is the author of The Food Activist Handbook and The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse, and the co-owner of Edible Vineyard magazine. Berlow founded and served as the first executive director of Island Grown Initiative, a grassrooots nonprofit that encourages and supports a resilient and accessible local food system on Martha’s Vineyard. She is the co-host of “The Local Food Report,” a public radio program out of WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She lives in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, and in Putney, Vermont.

Temple Grandin is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human, as well as Thinking in Pictures, Humane Livestock Handling, Improving Animal Welfare, and The Autistic Brain. Dr. Grandin’s humane livestock facility designs have been adopted all over the world, and she is a consultant on animal welfare to several segments of the fast food industry. Her work has been featured on NPR, 60 Minutes, and The Today Show and in the New York Times and Time and Discover magazines. The story of her life was made into an Emmy Award-winning HBO movie titled Temple Grandin. Dr. Grandin is a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University.