Palmer Slaughterhouse Dodges Closure with Purchase by Soldotna Rancher

The slaughterhouse is one of just three USDA-inspected and approved in the state; the other two are Delta Meat & Sausage in Delta Junction and AK’s Midstate Meats in North Pole.

According to a timeline from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the Palmer facility dates back to the early ‘80s, when the Alaska Agricultural Action Council obtained a legislative appropriation to finance construction. Through 1985 it was privately operated by a loan from the Action Council. In 1986, the private owners defaulted on the loan, resulting in Department of Natural Resources and Department of Corrections operating it, with Division of Agriculture managers and inmate labor. Operating at a near-constant loss, the state tried many times between 2000 and 2014 to offload the plant, even offering in 2002 a $1-per-year proposal to lease and operate it, with no takers.

The state sank more than $4 million into its operation between 1981 and 2005, and it ran at a net loss every year between 2006 and 2015, except in 2014, when the facility made a $42,500 profit, credited partly to more culled dairy cattle going through the facility that year.

State prisons not only provided labor (which gave valuable job training to inmates); they were also the plant’s largest customer, consistently buying more than half of the slaughterhouse’s meat after it was packaged—at a markup.

The plant finally found a private buyer in 2016, when Greg Giannulis, owner of Mike’s Quality Meats, posted a fire-sale price of $300,000. Five years later, Giannulis sold the plant to Alaska Meat, a venture of Todd Elsberry, a former police officer and North Pole hog producer, and his business partner, real estate broker Bill Borden.

Listening Session Prompts a Decision

Division of Agriculture Director Bryan Scoresby notes that, although the state no longer has a financial interest, the plant remains “a critical piece of infrastructure that the red meat industry in Alaska needs.”

After Borden announced the plant’s closure on social media, the division held a listening session to measure public interest. “There’s so much public interest in the ag community in the slaughterhouse. A lot of people reached out to me, asking what’s the state going to do, because there is a need [for a USDA-approved slaughterhouse],” Scoresby says.

Without the USDA stamp of approval, Alaska-grown meat can only be sold in private sales. For example, a rancher can sell halves or quarters of a beef or hog, and the meat can be cut into steaks or ground into burger by a processor, but without the USDA stamp, it can’t be resold to a grocery store or restaurant. It’s even illegal for a person who buys a half of a beef or a hog to resell to a neighbor, Scoresby says, just as it would be for someone to shoot a moose, have it cut and packaged, and resell any portion of that meat.

Scoresby says the listening session heard from many people who said the slaughterhouse was needed, and they floated a number of ideas for its future. Adams says he listened with interest. He had considered buying the plant, he says, but was on the fence.

“I was wishy-washy until that point; up until when I heard all the statements from people who said how devastating it was going to be. Then I jumped in,” he says.

“I won’t say my heart’s not in my throat about it; I’m fully aware that the plant has problems. I know there’s a bunch of deferred maintenance. I’m probably going to be out $50 grand right out the gate, just to get up to speed,” Adams adds.

Asked how he’s going to turn a profit when the plant has demonstrated difficulty doing so, Adams says he’s confident in his business skills. “The fact that the state failed means nothing to me,” he says.

He has selected plant operators who are familiar with the facility and plans to make long-overdue repairs. He plans to hit retail sales hard, such as luring restaurant owners with the high quality of his own beef and choice cuts produced at the plant.

“We’re going to be retail; that won’t be overstated. Maybe that means bringing animals in from Canada, feeding them up to our standards, and getting them out the door,” he says. “We’re going to do wild game.”

Those tricks might be just what the slaughterhouse needs. “I think if you combine the presence of the larger herds—which should at least, hopefully, meet the minimum of overhead running it—then you add retail, then you add wild game processing, then I think you could run it,” Adams says.

Big Pharma’s Payout Underwrites Organic Farm

Adams says he didn’t intend to get into farming, really; he wanted to have a couple of cows. Then he got a couple more. The more cows he had, the more he needed to make things pencil out.

“That was 288 cows ago,” he says. Now he’s working “from dark to dark” trying to make 4T% Ranch turn a profit.

“I didn’t exist a few years ago. Now, by cattle numbers, I’m probably the second- or third-largest rancher in the state,” Adams says.

He runs a herd of about 250 cattle in the Soldotna area. Adams originally moved to Alaska in 2006 and worked as a public defender for the state for six years. Weary of low pay, he moved to California and worked for six years doing personal injury law, and then he took on big pharmaceutical companies in mass tort cases. That work provided both the funding and the name for his ranch: 40 percent was his legal fee on personal injury cases, he says.

Adams sees poetic justice in raising organic food in one of the most pristine states in the US. “My final… snub to big pharma was to take their money and turn it into an organic farm. What better use of their stolen money, basically, than to use it to provide extremely good food?” he asks.

The road has not been easy, though. The 4T% Facebook page is a quasi-diary of the ranch’s challenges. From news about a Black Angus bull’s death, followed by the death of another bull in October, to a post sharing news of a single day that involved a blown seal on a skid-steer, a flooded steer pen, a broken tub grinder, a meat locker that blew a line and stopped working, and a loaded trailer that lost two tires and was stranded on the highway, Adams doesn’t sugarcoat the nitty-gritty realities of what it takes to operate a ranch in Alaska.

“I am one signature away from getting the meat plant in Palmer. I haven’t worked up the courage to sign it yet. I am terrified. I have never been this cash poor… everything is tied up in cattle and land and equipment and this farm. Yet the farm eats almost $150,000 a month,” he said in a post on October 28, with emphasis on “month.”

Farm living is a big change from lawyering. The post continued, “I remember when I used to go to lunch. I went to Spain once. I used to walk my dog. I went to the gym and went for drinks with friends. Now it is work. I have no social life at all. I have gone 949 days without a single day off. I have an insane day today, and 13 inches of new snow adds so much to my plate. I took a moment to memorialize this moment because I am scared. If this fails, I have worked this hard for nothing. I don’t enjoy this to be honest: the constant emergencies. Worrying about money all day, every day. The never-ending toil. The huge numbers of people who depend on me to never falter, never break, never fail. A few deep breaths and I will try one more time to ranch in the hardest damned place there is.”

Did he sign the purchase agreement? He did.

His Facebook page, with more than 4,500 followers, gets a lot of interaction, some offers for help and general cheering on of his efforts. More than 400 people, mostly apparently Alaskans, interacted with the October 28 post, several suggesting that he post his trials on TikTok or make videos on YouTube to document—and monetize–them.

Not all of his supporters are online. An October 26 fall farm tour, where he showed visitors the ranch and talked about his commitment to raising high quality beef cattle, had a turnout of about 100. He already has commitments to buy a quarter of the beef he plans to sell in 2025. A lot of the people cheering him on were excited to hear they might be able to purchase his beef out of Palmer. And in a strange way, buying the slaughterhouse might give Adams a little more time for himself.

“That’s really why I bought the USDA plant because… I can’t farm as hard as I’m farming myself all day and also spend the whole day processing beef,” he says.