These days, you can walk into a grocery store and find pretty much every cut of meat you’d want. But how often do you know where this meat actually comes from?
I tagged along to Radersburg with Montana Mobile Livestock Slaughter to see a bull butchered for meat.
NOTE: video includes images of animal slaughter
"I truly think that harvesting animals on the farm like this with zero stress makes a difference in the taste you get in your mouth when you taste the meat that’s been butchered," says Travis Kamps.
Kamps is the owner of Montana Mobile Livestock Slaughter. He is considered a "custom exempt butcher" by Montana law.
"I don't sell any kind of meat—I'm just a service provider. So I'm slaughtering their meat for them, and then I transport it to a butcher shop that will do the cutting, wrapping, and dry aging and things like that," he says.
Kamps was born and raised a farm boy in Gallatin Gateway. He spent 12 months deployed to Iraq in 2002 with the National Guard and later received his degree in construction engineering and business administration at Montana State University.
"In 2020 when COVID hit, like many people, I found myself at a crossroads, you know—mentally, emotionally. I was doing a job that I wanted to get away from," he says.
Kamps explains that he got his business idea during that time—seeing how sparse meat shelves became during the pandemic.
"It struck a little panic in me. Because I didn’t make the effort the year before to go out and do some hunting and get some wild game in my freezer so that I had food security at home," he says.
A letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture affirmed Kamps’ business model earlier this year, noting, “Small and very small slaughter and processing operations are important to our nation’s food supply.”
I watched Kamps’ process, start to finish—from the dispatch of the 2,100-pound bull to the butchering down to 1,200 pounds of meat.
Kamps says the entire process is done humanely.
"Like I said, the humane way the animals are treated—I grew up doing this, feeding animals every day knowing they’re going to get butchered, so you don’t get attached. But you still care for them. You’re stewards of the animal," he says.
Kamps says it’s hard, honest work that he’s proud to share with his son.
"This is my livelihood and I'm truly passionate about it. It’s a way for me as a father to instill a work ethic in him, like I had growing up on a farm," Kamps says.
