By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

EAST PEORIA, Ill. — Approximately 70 pork producers gathered in East Peoria Feb. 9 to hear two representatives from the USDA’s Grain, Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) explain how to claim losses suffered by the producers when Meadowbrook Farms, a $28 million, member-owned hog processing facility in Rantoul, ceased operations in late January. It turned out the producers did most of the talking at the meeting – and many were as unhappy with the USDA as they were Meadowbrook Farms.

“We called this meeting to (inform) all the livestock producers who are unpaid by Meadowbrook Farms as to the proper procedures for filing bond and trust claims,” said Jay Johnson, regional director of GIPSA, who attended the meeting with Alan Christian, deputy administrator with the packers and stockyards program. “The urgency of the bond is that you have 60 days from when the livestock is sold until your time expires to file. It is important to get out here and identify any producers that may be unpaid so they can get the paperwork going.”

Johnson said that as many as 100 producer/shareholders are owed just under $6 million by Meadowbrook Farms, which carried a bond to cover losses of only $740,000. That money will be split among the shareholders, but producers will not see any return on their investment unless they file claims provided by GIPSA at the meeting, Johnson stressed.

Johnson would not assign a timetable to when producers who file claims might get paid for their hogs. “It’s difficult to say. I’ve seen the process take as soon as 90 days and up to a year,” he said.
After Johnson and Christian’s brief instructions and remarks, it was the pork producers’ turn to do the talking. One farmer, who did not give his name, accused the USDA of “dropping the ball big time” by not stepping in and suspending Meadowbrook Farms’ operations earlier, despite the agency’s awareness of allegations that co-op members were underpaid by as much as $20 per head or not paid at all by Meadowbrook’s operators.

“I really have no response to that,” said Christian in response to the producer’s speech. “GIPSA has an ongoing investigation, so we really can’t comment too much on the situation.”

Meadowbrook board chairman Roger Walk said a couple of factors, including an alleged default on a contract by Chicago-based Triad Foods that left Meadowbrook Farms with $4 million to $5 million in losses, caused the co-op to halt slaughtering operations and temporarily lay off its 600 workers. Walk is hoping the USDA and local politicians can help the company secure a “bridge loan” from the government so Meadowbrook can reopen its doors, but the plan comes too late to appease most of the producers who attended the meeting.

“We put our trust in (Meadowbrook management) and they failed us by grossly mismanaging this company,” said Waterloo, Ill. farmer Dan Voelker. Voelker claims Meadowbrook owes his pork operation nearly $500,000.

Walk told reporters that Meadowbrook’s board of directors did the best job they could and company officials had no choice but to close the plant.

“I thought we made good business decisions with the information that we were given,” he said. “With better market conditions and had our contract with Triad not defaulted, I think we’d be in a lot different situation.”

Some of the producers seemed to indicate they had little faith in the USDA and GIPSA enforcing debt collection from Meadowbrook and called for the involvement of the Illinois Attorney General’s office in the matter.

The Rantoul plant, built to process 3,600 hogs per day and market 150 million pounds of pork per year, opened in 2004. Meadowbrook Farms’ corporate office is located in Belleville, Ill. According to its company website, Meadowbrook Farms is owned by 200 “family farm members.”