In a noisy, refrigerated room, Chase Meeks checked a customer’s order before breaking down a large piece of beef. He’s the lead meat-processor and manager of a family-owned butcher shop near Shade in southeast Ohio, appropriately named The Local Butcher.
In Ohio, 17,000 family farms raise beef cattle. But butcher shops are much smaller in number: Across the state there are only around 300 meat processing businesses. Neither Athens nor Meigs county had a butcher until Chase’s family moved their business here from Gallipolis in 2021.
Chase pointed to each of the cuts he made off the massive hunk of beef, noting the customer’s name — they are regular clients. He knows these cows and he knows their farmers.
That level of care leads people like Renae Logsdon and her daughter Desirae of Foster Farms to travel over an hour here from their farm in Amanda, Ohio.
After the butcher they had used for years retired, they tried others in their area. But Desirae says they noticed a difference in the way their animals behaved at The Local Butcher — it wasn’t a fight to get them off the truck.
“Usually, you go to a butcher or a slaughterhouse, the livestock is scared to come off the trailer because they can smell it. And there, you don’t smell it,” Desirae said. “Honestly it’s probably one of the best facilities that I’ve seen. How they handle them and care for them and everything is clean. It’s one of the best ones I’ve been to.”
It’s part of the ethical approach to butchery that the Meeks family holds to. Rhonda Meeks, who runs the business with her husband Kenny, son Chase and daughter Jenna, says they follow the livestock handling practices of industry expert Temple Grandin, who pioneered more humane treatment in meat processing facilities.
It starts when the farmer drops off their animals.
“It comes the day before because we want the animals to be cleaned out and we want them to be calm. Then the next day, slaughter day, they are taken in, one at a time and humanely slaughtered,” Rhonda said.
Larger facilities process multiple animals at once. The smaller scale of the Meeks family’s operation allows them to focus on one animal at a time. That aligns with one of Grandin’s core principles: to keep surrounding areas calm and with few visual distractions, which have been shown to frighten the animals. The goal is to reduce fear and distress in the animals so they only have one bad moment.
“On our slaughter floor it is very quick, painless and we do every possible thing to make sure that the animals are not stressed,” Rhonda said.
It’s something Desirae appreciates as a third-generation livestock farmer.
“How they have it set up…they understand livestock, they raise livestock. They don’t want to treat our livestock how they wouldn’t want to treat theirs,” Desirae said.
The Local Butcher extends that care to their community as well, donating meat to multiple food pantries throughout southeast Ohio. Chase Meeks says, as the only game in town, they feel a high level of responsibility.
“Just like any small business, we take pride in what we do,” he said. “Being the only butcher shop in the county and Meigs, we’re able to provide a service that nobody else does.”
That allows family farms to keep their business local.
Now, the Meeks family is looking at a way to expand the shelf life of local meats. Currently neither county has a commercial smoking facility. So, they’ve applied for a grant to fill that gap too.