Until recently, though, a dearth of high-quality local meat processors made cattle a costly endeavor. The three small-scale processing facilities in nearby Greene County lacked the capacity for the volume of meat produced, and cattle farmers sometimes had to wait more than a year for their animals to be processed. As a result, many farmers sold their calves into commodity markets, which meant they shipped the animals to the Midwest for processing, and then the meat was sent back to East Tennessee to be sold retail. All that transportation cut into farmers’ profits.
In 2021, a group of leaders in the East Tennessee agriculture community decided that Washington County would benefit from a new meat-processing facility. The group managed to secure $10 million in local, state, and federal funds and opened the Appalachian Producers Cooperative (APC) facility in June 2025.
Lexy Close, the administrative manager at UPC. (Photo credit: Isaac Wood)
The new slaughterhouse is the first farmer-owned cooperative to be established in the state in more than 50 years. It has already doubled the region’s USDA-approved processing capacity. For the APC’s farmer-members, processing no longer takes months; there is currently zero wait time, and the whole process takes just two to four weeks.
To be a co-op member, farmers need to be recognized by the IRS as a farm (which means earning at least $1,000 per year) and, annually, both pay a $50 fee and process one head of beef or the weight equivalent in other livestock. When the facility is profitable, members will share those profits based how much they’ve used the facility.
Lexy Close has been working on this project since it started in 2021. She wrote grants for it as part of her role with the Appalachian Resources Conservation & Development Council and started full time as the administrative manager at the APC in August 2025. Close recognizes the state needs much more than one facility in one county, but sees APC as a good step in the right direction. “We’re hoping that [it’s] helping to build a more vibrant and profitable agricultural sector,” she said.
In a conversation with Civil Eats, Close discussed how the co-op’s leaders overcame the challenges they faced in getting the facility built, their goals for the future, and why they feel the project is an important endeavor.
As is the case in much of the U.S., there is a shortage of small-scale meat processors in Appalachia. What percentage of cattle in Tennessee were processed locally before the co-op opened?
There used to be three meat processors in Washington County back in the day, like 50 years ago. Then there was none for decades, and now there’s us. Now, only 6 percent of the animals you see just driving around [throughout Tennessee] are processed locally. The other 94 percent are [born here and] being sent off to the Midwest. In the latest agricultural census, there’s probably about 400,000 cattle within a two-hour radius of this facility in my county-by-county counting.
How does non-local processing affect farmers?
Historically, most of the farmers here are what are called cow-calf operations. The calves are with the mothers until they’re about 600 pounds. They’re often sold to the next step in the chain, which are “backgrounders,” and those folks are taking these weaned calves and bringing them to 900 pounds. Then they’re selling them [to processors in the Midwest]. A lot of local farmers are either cow-calf, or they’re backgrounders.
There’s usually thousands of dollars of difference between what they’re getting for that calf and the value of that finished meat, cut and sent to a grocery store. The goal was to cut out that middleman.
Can you describe what the Appalachian Producers Cooperative consists of and how it’s staffed? Also, what does the APC process look like for farmers?
It’s a 16,000-square-foot facility with super state-of-the-art equipment, and we offer custom—which is non-USDA-inspected—and also USDA-inspected slaughter and processing. There are a lot of labor-saving, high-powered, expensive machines here. On the kill floor, we have hydraulic lifts so folks aren’t having to bend and lift. It’s still hard work, but it’s a lot less strenuous.
