Opinion: Colorado ranchers, restaurants worried about ballot issue that would shutter meat processing plant

Lamb is as Colorado as 14,000-foot peaks and Palisade peaches. Raised in rugged terrain, Colorado lamb is known for its lean meat and rich flavor. Many connoisseurs have long claimed its superiority over its New Zealand counterpart.

It’s also less niche across culinary cultures than you might realize. It is served as birria or barbacoa in Mexican restaurants; Aleppo kebab in Syrian restaurants; on extra-large noodles in spicy northern and Sichuan Chinese menus; stewed in a dark gravy on Indian dosa or in a curry; shawarma or burgers in Mediterranean cuisine; in Nepalese dumplings; or in Moroccan tagines.

Some of Denver’s best or most well-known restaurants serve it, including Buckhorn Exchange, El Taco de Mexico and Michelin-starred Brutø. Most of it is Colorado-raised. A5 serves Buckner Ranch rack of lamb, as do Safta and Blackbelly. Chef Paul Reilly of Coperta gets lamb from Longs Peak Lamb. Alma Fonda Fina and Frasca Food and Wine get their lamb from Superior Farms.

“Diners eat meat,” Reilly said. “That’s just not going to change. They like beef and pork and lamb and chasing an essential service — the slaughterhouse — out of the city of Denver is not going to change that. It will only make it more expensive for diners and harder for ranchers. No one wins.”

“Colorado Lamb has been a staple on my menus for as long as I’ve lived here,” shared chef Max Mackissock of A5 and the Culinary Creative Group. “There is no other protein that is as synonymous with our state. Chefs locally, as well as around the world, cherish the amazing product for its mild yet nuanced flavor, and unparalleled texture. Colorado Lamb is one of the few local products that us Coloradans can share with pride wherever we go.”

Chef Matt Vawters, this year’s James Beard winner for Best Chef: Mountain category, regularly features Colorado lamb at his two restaurants in Breckenridge, though said it has become harder to source since a prominent facility in Greeley shuttered.

This November, lamb will also be served up on a Denver ballot referendum. The measure, proposed by an animal-rights group, would shut down the only lamb slaughterhouse in Denver and prevent any others from opening.

Superior Farms, located on Clarkson Street in northwest Denver, is a 70-year-old business responsible for processing between 15 and 20% of all the lamb raised in the United States. The employee-owned company is the only Halal-certified slaughterhouse in Colorado; its staff of 160 workers, predominantly Latinos, help supply meat to many restaurants, but also to retailers like King Soopers, local favorite Tonali’s Meats, and renowned gourmet food purveyor D’Artagnan.

The Denver Slaughterhouse Ban would shut down its operations by 2026 and ban any other meatpacking businesses from the city and county of Denver. A group called Pro Animal Future submitted the measure, arguing that “slaughterhouses are inhumane to workers, animals and the surrounding communities they pollute.”

As it is the only business affected, Superior Farms feels specifically targeted.

“I take pride in my work and the work of my colleagues,” said Gustavo Fernandez, general manager at Superior Farms. “I started here as a janitor when my brother was already employed by the company and worked my way up. We train our staff and see ourselves as an important link between ranchers and people who love to eat lamb. This proposal to shut us down could really hurt our employees, but also the ranchers and restaurants and the American lamb supply chain.”

Pro Animal Future maintains it is focusing on the bigger picture: ending factory farming across the U.S. While there are no factory farms in Denver, spokewsoman Natalie Fulton acknowledged on a local radio show recently, the group sees this as a first step in its long-term mission.

But Superior Farms does not get its lambs from factory farms; it sources them from a collective of ranchers, most of them in Colorado — and most of them are worried.

“This would have a huge impact on our industry as a whole,” Julie Hansmire, rancher at Colorado’s Campbell Hansmire Sheep, said. “We care for our animals and we are lucky. Sure, we have to manage around hikers, skiers and other land use, but our lambs thrive on the native forage in the mountains and desert.”

Hansmire owns three herds, each with around 1,000 animals, in Eagle County, north of Edwards. They graze in Colorado in the summer and fall, and are moved to Utah in the winter and spring.

According to Colorado Agricultural Statistics, in 2023 there were 415,000 lambs and sheep in the state in 2023, making it the third-largest sheep and lamb inventory in the United States, behind Texas and Wyoming. About half are ready to be processed at any time, Colorado Food Systems Council statistics show, which makes Colorado second nationally, behind California, in terms of slaughter-ready lamb inventory.

The majority of sheep and lambs raised in Colorado are harvested in USDA-inspected facilities or custom-exempt facilities in Colorado, according to the council. The USDA seal ensures that facilities comply with rigorous federal animal welfare standards. Of 21 such facilities in Colorado, two stand out for capacity over 1,000 heads. One is Colorado Lamb Processors in Brush, which handles up to 165,000 head a year and ships full carcasses to the East Coast for fabrication, further processing and distribution. Lambs harvested there are not distributed within Colorado.

The other one is Superior Farms, which processes only lamb.

Sheep ranchers all over the state are concerned with the possibility of losing a vital link in making their business viable, whether they use Superior Farms or not for processing. Reducing the capacity of lamb slaughter in Colorado and in the United States by nearly 20% will exacerbate the issue at a time when less than a quarter of the lamb consumed in the United States is American lamb. The other 75% is imported, mainly from New Zealand and Australia.

Mary-Kay Buckner, a supplier of restaurants and consistent presence at farmers markets, is not among Superior Farms’ clients, but she’s still worried.

“Sheep ranching, like much of agriculture, is a lovely but fragile business model with small margins and many variables that can shatter one’s plans,” she said. Buckner, who raised animals in Boulder County for 13 years, stumbled into the industry. “I was a vegetarian in college and after, mostly because I didn’t know how animals were being raised and didn’t like that,” she said. “My grandparents were butchers and farmers and agriculture just made sense to me through my family background.

“For our family, it is important to give animals the best life, let them roam and graze and never feed them grain. They only have one bad day in their lives.”

There is a lot of emotion in the way Hansmire and Buckner speak about their animals, their livelihoods, and about this proposed ordinance. There is also a lot of emotion in how the ordinance is presented by Pro Animal Future, and rightfully so. “A slaughterhouse is a facility where animals are brought for the purpose of being killed to be processed into food,” reads the Pro Animal Future website. “Denver’s last slaughterhouse kills over 1,000 baby lambs every day,” blasts a poster.

Meat eaters should recognize that our diet choices mean the taking of animals’ lives. While we as diners support trendy, hip phrases like nose-to-tail butchery, whole animal kitchens, and farm-to-table restaurants, we brush aside the uncomfortable reality of animals dying for that.

But that isn’t going away.

Nick Maneotis of High Country Lamb is also worried about the the Denver Slaughterhouse Ban. When his grandfather immigrated from Greece, he arrived in Utah and worked in mines, but soon bought sheep and traveled with them to Colorado, near Craig, where lots of Greeks also established their ranching roots.

A third-generation sheep rancher, Maneotis has been on high alert since the beginning of 2024, after wolves have been reintroduced to his area following a state ballot measure, approved by voters. “We are right in between where the wolves are between Jackson County and Grand County, holding our breath hoping they don’t come our way. This new proposed ordinance in Denver would affect sheep ranchers in a new way, when we already have a lot of serious challenges,” he said.

Chefs and restaurateurs are also concerned. EatDenver, an independent restaurant association, is opposing the ballot measure, as well as the Colorado Restaurant Association.

Restaurant consultant John Imbergamo, a vegetarian for over three decades, said: “I like Colorado lamb being available to restaurants and their guests. Closing that plant will increase financial and environmental costs to consumers during a time that everyone is concerned about value and climate change.”

Pro Animal Future, meanwhile, is hoping to change the national tide of the agricultural system away from using animals and toward a more plant-based food system.

Denver voters will decide this fall.

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