Murray Plains Meat Co-operative opens $2.5m micro-abattoir at Barham

When yet another meatworks closed its doors seven years ago, these Murray Plains farmers vowed to build their own. Now it’s complete.

Lauren Mathers with her Berkshire pigs at Barham, where Murray Plains Meat Cooperative has built a micro-abattoir to process cattle, lambs, pigs, poultry, buffalo and goats.

IN A bid to gain control of their meat-processing supply chain, 30 western Riverina farmers have built their own micro-abattoir, due to open by April.

The project has been funded by $2.5 million in farmer investment and government funding, and spearheaded by Murray Plains Meat Cooperative director and Bundarra Berkshires farmer Lauren Mathers, who runs free-range pigs and chickens at Barham NSW.

Lauren Mathers runs Bundarra Berkshires and is director of Murray Plains Meat Cooperative, which has built a farmer-owned micro-abattoir at Barham due to open by April. Picture: Zoe Phillips

The abattoir at Barham will process cattle, buffalo, lambs, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks and turkeys, with capacity capped at 720 tonnes a year.

“It is all about producing high quality carcasses and high quality meat,” Lauren said.

“There is a real need for it and we’ve had an amazing interest from people who can’t get their carcasses processed and are struggling with the price of freight.

“It is pretty exciting for anyone who has a business like ours or anyone who wants to start one.”

The co-op formed in 2019, in response to closure of a local meatworks, which forced many small-scale producers to travel huge distances to process their livestock.

“We decided as a group, there and then, we would build our own micro-abattoir,” said Lauren, who currently faces a 640km round trip, twice a week, to drop off and collect chickens at a Melbourne meatworks, and 560km round trip to deliver pigs to a different abattoir in Victoria.

Now, her journey will be less than 20km.

Murray Plains Meat Co-op, which has farmer members from Deniliquin to Wakool, and Boundary Bend to Echuca, worked with Murray River council to secure grant funding, totalling more than $2 million.

With construction complete, the group is now recruiting staff and inviting community members to back the project through co-operative co-investment units.