Montana is a cowboy state. Full of dramatic, pristine landscapes and seemingly endless open space, its residents point proudly to the fact that the ultra-rural state has more cows than people. Cattle have long been grazed in the high elevation sagebrush grasslands, which are known to provide the animals with more protein than other grasses. But these days, aside from a few high-profile grassfed beef producers, the vast majority of the state’s cattle get shipped to feedlots in the Midwest, where they get fattened on grains, slaughtered, and sold into the conventional market.

Now, big changes are afoot. In November, the owners of JD.com—a Chinese shopping website that sells everything from diapers to vacuum cleaners, as well as fresh food—signed an agreement to spend up to $100 million to build Montana’s largest meat processing facility. The commitment was part of a deal the mega-retailer made with the Montana Stockgrowers Association to buy $200 million worth of beef from the state. The move is part of a much larger push by Chinese companies to buy into the U.S. animal agriculture industry, as the middle class there grows increasingly interested in what they see as a safer, higher-quality source of food. Demand from China is also driving growth in the dairy, poultry, and pork sectors throughout the U.S.

Increasing Montana’s meat processing capacity would bring in hundreds of jobs and keep more of the money from cattle production in Montana, say advocates for the project.

But critics say it would also lead to more Montana cattle raised on feedlots and many of the problems that go along with large animal processing plants, such as increased truck traffic and decreased quality of life for nearby residents who have to contend with foul smells and pollution from animal waste. A group in Great Falls, Montana is already organizing against a proposal for a separate, large meat processing plant, following the example of communities such as Tonganoxie, Kansas, which rejected a large Tyson poultry plant last year.

China banned beef imports from the U.S. in 2003 following an outbreak of mad cow disease, but last spring the Trump administration and Chinese government began renegotiating that policy. Montana Senator Steve Daines wanted to make sure his state was first in line if those markets did reopen, and last April he brought a red cooler with four Montana steaks to a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing. In June, the Chinese government lifted the ban, and when JD.com approached the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce about finding a source of U.S. beef, Montana was top of mind.

Steve Daines (second from right), with China Premier Li Keqiang (middle). (Photo courtesy of Steve Daines)

Can a Big Slaughterhouse Work in Montana?

Montana doesn’t produce enough meat right now to supply everything the Stockgrowers Association promised to JD.com, which is why the deal also includes plans to build a slaughterhouse to boost the industry. In January of 2016, for example, Nebraska had about 2.5 times as many cows as Montana, but according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture it processed and sold more than 400 times as much meat that year. Many of the cows slaughtered in Nebraska come from other states, including Montana.

Meat processing plants in Montana can’t compete with slaughterhouses in the Midwest because the state doesn’t have the same access to local corn or soybeans to fatten the cows before slaughter. However, Errol Rice, executive vice president of the Stockgrowers Association, says that part of the $100 million investment could go toward expanding feedlots near the new facility and using Montana barley or new varieties of corn that grow well in the state. That would likely require many Montana farmers to switch from wheat production to those feed crops. Along with cattle, wheat is one of the most important agricultural products in the state, and getting farmers to switch might not be so easy.

But even if Montana can produce its own feed crops, it will probably still be more expensive to finish cows there, and Rice said beef from Montana would likely fetch a higher price due in part to the state’s association with traditional ranching and its image as a cowboy state.

“We’ve made it very clear to JD. They could have gone to Nebraska and probably gotten a cheaper deal,” he said. “But we’re confident that we can deliver a far more premium product than what some of their customers are getting.”

The agreement signed in November includes almost no details about what the facility would look like, but it says construction could begin as early as this spring. This month, the Stockgrowers Association hopes to start discussions about what the investment will look like.

The group doesn’t have an exact blueprint for the slaughterhouse yet, and the agreement signed in November isn’t legally binding. But Rice said the starting point for those discussions will be based on a feasibility study conducted in 2014 by the nonprofit One Montana, which seeks to connect people in urban and rural parts of the state.

The facility described in the One Montana plan would process about 250 cows and bison per day, which isn’t as big as some of the operations in the Midwest, which can process as many as 5,000 animals a day, but would dwarf the ones currently in Montana. According to the study, this plant would process three times as many cows as all other slaughterhouses in the state combined.

Meat processing in Montana. (Photo © Matt Blois)

Stillwater Packing in Columbus is the state’s largest USDA-approved slaughterhouse. But Jayson Emmet, owner of Stillwater Packing and vice president of the Montana Meat Processors Association, said his company only processes around eight cows a day, as well as some pigs and sheep. He said a bigger slaughterhouse comes with a serious footprint, and he’s not sure Montanans will accept it.

“There’s nothing glorious about owning a slaughterhouse. I mean the smells that go along with it,” he said. “When you drive by a big plant in the Midwest … you can smell it from a long ways away.”