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It's a busy time of year for turkey farmers around the country. And these days, with the growth of the local food movement, small family farms are struggling to keep up with all the orders for birds. So, we went to find out what one New England farmer is doing to get her gobblers from the field to the table. Enter the "abattoir."

On a recent chilly November morning, I visited Kate Stillman's farm, a 160-acre spread nestled in between some little hilly pastures and some woods. It's a beautiful little place. And it's been a farm here in Hardwick, Mass., since the early 1800s. Stillman has been fixing up the barns and old farmhouse. "We came to this place about six years ago, and it's been a labor of love," she says.

i i

Week-old piglets are staying warm in the old wooden barn at Stillman's farm in Hardwick, Mass. Chris Arnold/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Chris Arnold/NPR

Week-old piglets are staying warm in the old wooden barn at Stillman's farm in Hardwick, Mass.

Chris Arnold/NPR

Like many small farms serving the local food market, Kate Stillman raises many kinds of animals here — lambs, cattle, chickens, and, in an old wooden barn, some cute little piglets jockeying for a good spot to nurse next to a sow.

But November, of course, is all about the turkeys. These are free-range turkeys, so they have the run of the whole farm. But as the weather has turned cold, many of the birds have been huddling in a greenhouse that's been turned into a temporary "turkey warm house." Some of her turkeys are so-called heritage breed birds. They look more like wild turkeys and are more like the birds that, say, Benjamin Franklin would have eaten hundreds of years ago.

With the local food movement growing, Stillman's turkey farming business, you might say, is spreading its wings. Less than 10 years ago, "when we started here, I struggled to sell 50 birds," she says. These days? "We raised just about 700 this year." And that actually created a problem.

Many small local farms have been popping up around New England, but Stillman says there just aren't enough processing facilities nearby where farmers can take their animals to be killed and butchered.

"That's a huge problem for all new England farms," she says, adding, "Last year, we were processing our birds in Vermont, and it's a two-and-a-half hour hike for us."

Which was tough to do, because it meant chasing around hundreds of turkeys, trying to catch them and pack them onto a trailer in the middle of the night. So this year, for the first time, these birds are meeting their fate right here on this farm.

Stillman says it's not just turkeys. She was becoming acutely aware that a lack of nearby processing facilities was the biggest limiting factor for the growth of her small farm business. And with more people asking for meat butchered in very particular ways these days, she found she couldn't fill those orders. So a few years ago, Stillman decided to build her own abattoir. The new wood-sided, low-slung building with a stainless steel chimney sits across the road from her house and barns.

i i

Local farmer Kate Stillman decided to build her own abattoir because, she says, a lack of processing facilities is "a huge problem for all New England farmers." Chris Arnold /NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Chris Arnold /NPR

Local farmer Kate Stillman decided to build her own abattoir because, she says, a lack of processing facilities is "a huge problem for all New England farmers."

Chris Arnold /NPR

Inside, butcher John Steines is just finishing up cutting up some hams for Thanksgiving. Stillman says she's lucky to have a butcher as good as Steines, because not too many people these days can actually break down a whole animal from the field to the table.

Steines, in his white apron, says he likes working in a place he's appreciated. As a kid, he says, "I was told that I had a knife in my hand before I had a pencil." He says he grew up butchering animals with his father on his family farm.

It actually took Stillman three years to build her abattoir. With the plumbing, septic system and specialty equipment involved, and delays for permitting, the project took a lot longer and cost much more than she ever thought it would— upwards of $700,000. Finding a bank to loan her the money wasn't easy, either.

"A single female opening up a slaughterhouse ... raises some eyebrows," she says. "I sat in a room full of bankers who said to me, 'Wouldn't you rather bake cookies'?' "

"You can choose to be offended," she says, "or you can tuck it in your back pocket and keep going."

And that's what Stillman and her farm crew are doing. They've been working late into the night, getting all the Thanksgiving orders ready to go and packed up in her new walk-in refrigerator. "We all sat down and shared a beer last night and said, we did this!" she says.

Because of that, 700 people around Massachusetts will have a locally raised and butchered bird from Stillman's farm for Thanksgiving.

local meat

turkeys

local food

livestock

Thanksgiving

It's a busy time of year for turkey farmers around the country. And these days, with the growth of the local food movement, small family farms are struggling to keep up with all the orders for birds. So, we went to find out what one New England farmer is doing to get her gobblers from the field to the table. Enter the "abattoir."

On a recent chilly November morning, I visited Kate Stillman's farm, a 160-acre spread nestled in between some little hilly pastures and some woods. It's a beautiful little place. And it's been a farm here in Hardwick, Mass., since the early 1800s. Stillman has been fixing up the barns and old farmhouse. "We came to this place about six years ago, and it's been a labor of love," she says.

i i

Week-old piglets are staying warm in the old wooden barn at Stillman's farm in Hardwick, Mass. Chris Arnold/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Chris Arnold/NPR

Week-old piglets are staying warm in the old wooden barn at Stillman's farm in Hardwick, Mass.

Chris Arnold/NPR

Like many small farms serving the local food market, Kate Stillman raises many kinds of animals here — lambs, cattle, chickens, and, in an old wooden barn, some cute little piglets jockeying for a good spot to nurse next to a sow.

But November, of course, is all about the turkeys. These are free-range turkeys, so they have the run of the whole farm. But as the weather has turned cold, many of the birds have been huddling in a greenhouse that's been turned into a temporary "turkey warm house." Some of her turkeys are so-called heritage breed birds. They look more like wild turkeys and are more like the birds that, say, Benjamin Franklin would have eaten hundreds of years ago.

With the local food movement growing, Stillman's turkey farming business, you might say, is spreading its wings. Less than 10 years ago, "when we started here, I struggled to sell 50 birds," she says. These days? "We raised just about 700 this year." And that actually created a problem.

Many small local farms have been popping up around New England, but Stillman says there just aren't enough processing facilities nearby where farmers can take their animals to be killed and butchered.

"That's a huge problem for all new England farms," she says, adding, "Last year, we were processing our birds in Vermont, and it's a two-and-a-half hour hike for us."

Which was tough to do, because it meant chasing around hundreds of turkeys, trying to catch them and pack them onto a trailer in the middle of the night. So this year, for the first time, these birds are meeting their fate right here on this farm.

Stillman says it's not just turkeys. She was becoming acutely aware that a lack of nearby processing facilities was the biggest limiting factor for the growth of her small farm business. And with more people asking for meat butchered in very particular ways these days, she found she couldn't fill those orders. So a few years ago, Stillman decided to build her own abattoir. The new wood-sided, low-slung building with a stainless steel chimney sits across the road from her house and barns.

i i

Local farmer Kate Stillman decided to build her own abattoir because, she says, a lack of processing facilities is "a huge problem for all New England farmers." Chris Arnold /NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Chris Arnold /NPR

Local farmer Kate Stillman decided to build her own abattoir because, she says, a lack of processing facilities is "a huge problem for all New England farmers."

Chris Arnold /NPR

Inside, butcher John Steines is just finishing up cutting up some hams for Thanksgiving. Stillman says she's lucky to have a butcher as good as Steines, because not too many people these days can actually break down a whole animal from the field to the table.

Steines, in his white apron, says he likes working in a place he's appreciated. As a kid, he says, "I was told that I had a knife in my hand before I had a pencil." He says he grew up butchering animals with his father on his family farm.

It actually took Stillman three years to build her abattoir. With the plumbing, septic system and specialty equipment involved, and delays for permitting, the project took a lot longer and cost much more than she ever thought it would— upwards of $700,000. Finding a bank to loan her the money wasn't easy, either.

"A single female opening up a slaughterhouse ... raises some eyebrows," she says. "I sat in a room full of bankers who said to me, 'Wouldn't you rather bake cookies'?' "

"You can choose to be offended," she says, "or you can tuck it in your back pocket and keep going."

And that's what Stillman and her farm crew are doing. They've been working late into the night, getting all the Thanksgiving orders ready to go and packed up in her new walk-in refrigerator. "We all sat down and shared a beer last night and said, we did this!" she says.

Because of that, 700 people around Massachusetts will have a locally raised and butchered bird from Stillman's farm for Thanksgiving.

local meat

turkeys

local food

livestock

Thanksgiving

It's now Goliath versus Goliath in the quest for an Ebola vaccine.

Until now, the two leading candidates for a vaccine to protect against the Ebola virus were being led by global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline on the one hand, and a tiny company in Ames, Iowa, that was virtually unknown, on the other.

Today, the David in that scenario, NewLink Genetics, said it has made a deal with drugmaker Merck, to research, develop, manufacture and distribute the experimental Ebola vaccine. That move will put the two leading Ebola vaccine programs on more equal footing.

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Ebola Vaccine Could Start Testing In Africa By January

The NewLink vaccine is a based on a harmless virus that has been genetically engineered to incorporate bits of the Ebola virus. The Canadian government developed the vaccine and then licensed it to this small biotech company. The U.S. Defense Department has provided development funding to NewLink.

Still, NewLink has struggled to keep pace with the vaccine being developed by GlaxoSmithKline. (Johnson & Johnson also has an experimental Ebola vaccine in the works, but that effort is lagging the others).

"Merck's vaccine development expertise, commercial leadership and history of successful strategic alliances make it an ideal partner to expedite the development of [the experimental vaccine] and, if demonstrated to be efficacious and well-tolerated, to make it available to individuals and communities at risk of Ebola virus infection around the world," said NewLink CEO Charles Link, in a statement.

Both of these vaccines are being given to a handful of volunteers in the US, Europe and Africa, to see whether they are safe. The World Health Organization hopes that the vaccines will be ready early next year to be tested in people who are at high risk of contracting Ebola, such as healthcare workers in West Africa.

Health officials say an effective vaccine could help slow the spread of Ebola, but they say the epidemic will only end through old-fashioned public health measures: identifying and isolating everyone who is infected with the virus.

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As employers try to minimize expenses under the health law, the Obama administration has warned them against paying high-cost workers to leave the company medical plan and buy coverage elsewhere.

Such a move would unlawfully discriminate against employees based on their health status, three federal agencies said in a bulletin issued in early November.

Brokers and consultants have been offering to save large employers money by shifting workers with expensive conditions such as hepatitis or hemophilia into insurance marketplace exchanges established by the health law, Kaiser Health News reported in May.

The Affordable Care Act requires exchange plans to accept all applicants at pre-established prices, regardless of existing illness.

Because most large employers are self-insured, moving even one high-cost worker out of the company plan could save a company hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That's far more than the $10,000 or so it might give an employee to pay for an exchange plan's premiums.

Shots - Health News

Can Employers Dump Workers On Health Exchanges? Yes, For A Price

"Rather than eliminating coverage for all employees, some employers... have considered paying high-cost claimants relatively large amounts if they will waive coverage under the employer's plan," Lockton Companies, a large brokerage, said in a recent memo to clients.

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Many Big Employers Plan To Offer Skimpy Health Options Despite Law

The trend concerns consumer advocates because it threatens to erode employer-based coverage and drive up costs and premiums in the marketplace plans, which would absorb the expense of the sick employees. The burden would fall on consumers buying the plans and taxpayers subsidizing them.

Administration officials approached independent lawyers about the practice in May, saying, "We don't like this, but how can we address this?" said Christopher Condeluci, principal at CC Law & Policy, a legal firm. This month's guidance, he said, "is the first time that they've come out explaining how and why the administration believes it violates the law."

The Affordable Care Act itself doesn't block companies from paying sick workers to find coverage elsewhere, lawyers said. But other laws do, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Public Health Service Act, according to three federal agencies.

Specifically, paying a sick worker to leave the company plan violates those statutes' restrictions on discriminating against employees based on medical status, the departments said in their bulletin.

"If you were to cherry-pick your high-cost individuals and offer them money to send them over to the exchange... this would be a violation of HIPAA," according to the regulators, said Amy Gordon, a benefits lawyer with McDermott Will & Emery.

The agencies publishing the guidance were the departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services.

Starting next year, the health law requires large employers to provide medical insurance to most workers or face fines.

How many companies have offered to pay workers with chronic conditions to find coverage elsewhere is unclear.

"I know there are some brokers out there that were pushing this, but it was a limited number that I had heard about," Condeluci said. Even so, he added, the attitude of the administration was: "We don't want it to become widespread. Let's nip it in the bud now."

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