Las Vegas pig farm that relies on casino food scraps struggling with Strip closed from COVID-19
About 90 percent of the feed for Las Vegas Livestock, a small pig farm in Nevada, came from food scraps from casinos — everything from steak to lobster to candy. But when COVID-19 forced the Strip to close, the food supply stopped.
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LAS VEGAS – While tens of thousands of people rely on the Las Vegas Strip for work to keep food on the table, thousands of pigs also rely on the Strip for their meals.
Las Vegas Livestock, a local pig farm located about 30 miles northeast of the Strip, uses the food scraps from the casinos and turn it into feed.
“Las Vegas, you know, I call it the Holy Grail of food scraps. Well, I used to, now it's kind of dried up,” Hank Combs, owner of Las Vegas Livestock, told Fox News.
Before the pandemic shut down the Strip, Las Vegas Livestock would get around 25 tons of food scraps from casinos to turn into feed for its pigs. (Ben Brown / Fox News)
About 90 percent of the pigs' diet come from casino food scraps, but when COVID19 forced the Strip to shut down, the food supply stopped.
“That's been the biggest hit, just not having those [scraps] that used to come in daily. Now we have to rely on alternate food sources and sometimes that means that they don't come in as often or it's just one product which isn't very nutritionally well-rounded for the pigs' diet,” farm manager Sarah Stallard told Fox News.
Prior to the pandemic, Las Vegas Livestock would receive daily shipments of food scraps from casinos like the Venetian, Cosmopolitan, Mandalay Bay and others that participate in the farm’s food scrap recycling program. Everything from lobster to filet mignon to candy make it to the farm, where it goes through a unique system that de-packages the products, separating the trash and the food before its pumped through the cooker to create the feed for the pigs.
Las Vegas Livestock is the only company listed on the EPA's website regarding food waste donations to animals in Nevada, as well as the only one listed on Nevada's Division of Environmental Protection.
Utilizing food scraps to feed pigs is not common at U.S. farms, and in 2007, the most recent data found, only 3 percent of U.S. hog farms fed their animals food scraps.
The food supply has been severely limited since the Strip shut down in mid-March, and in just a few short months the farm went from having more than 4,000 pigs down to about 1,500.
“We were buying pigs every two to three weeks. So, we quit buying pigs right away because we knew that was going to affect our feed source,” Combs said.
COVID-19 has taken a toll on the industry, causing plants to shut down as employees get sick and slaughterhouses to close. With nowhere to take the pigs and no space to house them, farmers have been forced to euthanize thousands of animals.
A pig at Las Vegas Livestock can be seen drinking water and eating feed made from food scraps. (Ben Brown / Fox News)
Roughly 170,000 “market-ready” hogs cannot be processed due to plant closures, according to a report from the National Pork Producers Council in early May. The pigs will eventually grow too big to be accepted at harvest facilities, and an estimated 10 million hogs will have to be euthanized in the coming months to prevent overcrowding.
With big conglomerates being forced to unload their hogs at bargain prices in order to manage space, the smaller farms, like Las Vegas Livestock, are struggling to sell their animals and compete.
“Bigger facilities that are trying to get rid of their hogs, they're selling to the places that we sell to normally and very, very cheap. Since we buy them as feeder pigs at a certain rate, we have to sell them higher in order to be sustainable as a business. So right now, we can't do that.”
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Las Vegas Livestock buys feeder pigs around 60 pounds that are ready to be put on feed, which costs more and have to be sold at a higher rate to turn a profit.
Additionally, regulatory hurdles prevent smaller farms from having the same access to the consumer market as larger facilities – an ongoing issue that has been highlighted amid the pandemic.
“One of the things that you're seeing is proposals by members of Congress and in some states to really try to reduce those barriers and make sure that the smaller operators, those farmers, and those producers can get their products to the tables of American consumers who can introduce them in places where traditionally in the past they might not have been able to sell them like grocery stores,” said Rob Bluey, Heritage Foundation vice president of communications and spokesman for the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission.
Pigs eating from the trough at Las Vegas Livestock. (Ben Brown / Fox News)
The Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption Act, also known as the PRIME Act, is old legislation that has gained new life as the coronavirus continues to have a heavy impact on the meat industry. It aims to halt the wasteful slaughter of countless livestock and would “give individual states freedom to permit intrastate distribution of custom-slaughtered meat such as beef, pork, or lamb to consumers, restaurants, hotels, boarding houses, and grocery stores.”
The act was re-introduced in the House last May, and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul and Maine independent Angus King have put forward accompanying legislation in the Senate
"What this legislation would do is expand the exemptions and make it easier (for small farmers) to sell to places like grocery stores and restaurants," Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky, – who first introduced the legislation along with Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, almost five years ago – told Fox News’ Hollie McKay. "The same regulations that apply to multinational beef hackers that slaughter 10,000 animals a day shouldn't apply to a rancher slaughtering 20."
Combs hopes the PRIME Act will help smaller farms compete with larger facilities and underscored the need for more processing facilities.
“You have this problem with a pandemic when those plants shut down it affects the whole industry. If you had a bunch of little places all over the country that were processing maybe a hundred or so at a time, you wouldn't have that problem when those shut down. It wouldn't be devastating to the industry,” Combs said.
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Combs has been able to work with other companies to find alternative sources for food scraps and with casinos looking to reopen, albeit with limited capacity and restrictions, in the coming weeks, he is optimistic that the farm will be able to stay afloat.
“I mean we were growing, we were struggling, new businesses, right? And all the learning curves you have to do with that. We weren’t that profitable, and now we have this, we have no feed and no market basically which makes it pretty devastating,” he added.
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