Felito's finest LLC is a family owned and operated working cattle ranch of four generations

Felito's Finest LLC received a $200,000 Project Grant award from the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service under the Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grants – Supplemental Funding program (CFDA 10.180). The funding will support construction of a USDA-compliant, federally inspected slaughter and cold storage facility in Santa Elena, Texas.

Specifically, the grant funds will be used to build out a kill floor, skin room, weighing facility, rail system, and chill room with capacity for 20 beef carcasses. Located adjacent to the awardee's existing corrals, the new facility will allow livestock to be harvested on-site and carcasses transported briefly to the company's existing processing operation. This fully integrated approach is intended to reduce transportation costs for Felito's Finest and other local ranchers in South Texas, where the nearest federally inspected slaughter plant is over 500 miles away. The award was issued on September 30, 2021 and work is expected to be completed by September 29, 2022.

Located on rancho santa FE in starr county, texas, we are an independent, integrated beef producer - we breed, raise, feed, process, and distribute high quality wagyu beef under our family's 2F akaushi beef label. The RIO grande valley in deep south texas has a fast-growing population of consumers and a healthy cattle ranching industry comprised of mostly socially disadvantaged producers. Presently, there is no federally inspected beef slaughter plant within 500 miles. Consequently, we south texas ranchers incur monumental transportation costs to harvest our steers and provide a consistent supply of beef to our customers. This project will provide funds to construct a USDA-compliant, federally inspected slaughter and cold storage space to be available in the RIO grande valley. The construction will be fully equipped with a kill floor, a skin room, weigher, rail system, and a chill room with capacity for 20 beef carcasses. The facility will be constructed tandem to our existing corrals. Livestock will be rounded up in the corrals, harvested in the knockbox, and cleaned in the new facility. Carcasses will be transported one short mile through rancho santa FE to our existing processing facility. The addition of the slaughter and cold room will allow our family to fully integrate our beef operation and increase our capacity to slaughter and process our meat. IT will be an extremely valuable, and accessible, option to the thousands of local ranchers in south texas.