Poultry plant in Nunn gets new owner, name
October 7, 2009
By JoAn Bjarko
The Wellington
An employee of Whole Foods Market will reopen a defunct poultry processing plant in Nunn as soon as new equipment arrives and he gets certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Doug Rice has named the business Rocky Mountain Poultry Processing LLC. A Fort Collins native and retired law enforcement officer, Rice said he is very involved in the local food movement. He’s been raising chickens, turkeys and pigs on a small farm east of Interstate 25 for 18 years.
“I promote other people growing their own food,” Rice said in an Oct. 3 telephone interview. “I want to provide a service for northern Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska for USDA-inspected meat.”
When the plant reopens, it will be the only poultry processing plant available to the public in Colorado.
Rice said he has no interest in the expanded business model the former processor, Northern Colorado Poultry, was pursuing in Wellington (Colorado).
Rice was one of many local growers who had NCP process his animals before it closed in mid-September. He’s also a personal friend of Lori and Stan Waddell, the landowners who leased the rural Nunn processing building to NCP. The plant is located 15 miles east of Wellington and had many customers from the area.
Lori Waddell said they had no forewarning that NCP was shutting down.
“A lot of people are left holding the bag over this,” Waddell said. “We’ve had people driving up to our house and calling us. There are a lot of upset people. We’re working as fast as we can to get it open again.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of chickens bred to grow quickly for processing could die before the new business opens.
Rice also recounted numerous problems with the NCP operation. He said he helped take more than 1,500 pounds of chicken to the Larimer County Landfill because there were no records of when it was processed.
The Waddells started the Nunn poultry plant about nine years ago when they were raising their own chickens.
“Our goal was for a clean, small, mom-and-pop operation,” Waddell explained. “We catered to 4-Hers and people wanting custom work.”
At that size, she said, the current system of hauling potable water to the site for processing is sufficient and approved by the Weld County Health Department.
The Waddells sold the business called Northern Colorado Poultry and leased the building to Penny Henker, another Weld County resident, about four years ago. Henker then sold the business to Bill Beilhartz of Wellington, Brad Holley of Denver and Dave Bravdica of Wheatridge. In an interview last month, Henker called the business situation with NCP a “legal mess.”
Waddell said she and her husband have full-time jobs, so they cannot run the plant. USDA inspectors work Monday through Friday, she explained, and have to be on-site during processing. Poultry cannot be sold by one person to another without the USDA inspection.
Rice, however, is ready to take on a business that has interested him for many years. He has signed a new lease with the Waddells. Rice said he is hoping to open the second week of November, but a lot of work has to be done first.
Rice worked as a patrol officer and investigator for the Fort Collins Police Department for 25 years and then went to work in the Whole Foods Market meat department when it opened in Fort Collins five years ago.
His goal, he said, is to operate a “top-notch, very clean, sanitary, well-run organization” that caters to local growers. Customers, he said, might include people raising 30 birds for the family freezer or birds to sell at farmers’ markets.
Rice said he is planning to process 200 to 250 chickens a day and 60 turkeys a day. Rabbits could be processed once a week.
“That’s all that’s really needed here,” he said. “Growing poultry year-round in northern Colorado is very hard to do.”
Rocky Mountain Poultry Processing will employ himself and three others, Rice said. He also wants to become certified for organic processing.
“It’s quite exciting with the local food movement taking off as fast as it is,” Rice said. “People are tired of getting their chickens from big suppliers.”
Earlier this year, NCP had been actively pursuing an expansion in Wellington.
In July, NCP received Wellington Town Board approval on a 4-3 vote to build a new plant that could process up to 1,500 birds a day, but that sparked a protest referendum from local residents.
Even though NCP is not operating at this time, the citizen referendum requires the town board to vote on repealing its conditional approval of locating the poultry processing plant in Boxelder Business Park on the north side of Wellington. The vote is scheduled for Oct. 13.
If the board upholds the conditional approval, it will then be required to set a special election on the issue to let the community decide.
The business park where NCP wanted to build is zoned light industrial. However, the town zoning code would allow someone to build a slaughtering facility in the adjacent industrial zone without a public hearing or town board decision, according to town administrator Larry Lorentzen.
Lorentzen said he and town attorney Brad March agree that the industrial zone’s list of uses by right, which includes “manufacturing and preparing food products,” would allow poultry processing. As of Oct. 5, Lorentzen had not received any applications for building in the industrial zone.
