HANCOCK COUNTY — Planning officials are contemplating a rule change that would allow authorities to consider, on a case-by-case basis, requests to process animals in agricultural areas.
County regulations currently only allow animal products processing in places zoned industrial general, and only after a special exception is granted by the Hancock County Board of Zoning Appeals.
The practice is not permitted in areas with agricultural zoning, noted Mike Dale, executive director of the Hancock County Area Plan Commission.
“I’ve said to the plan commission many times before, I do consider agriculture as an industrial zoning district,” Dale told plan commission members at their recent meeting. “There’s heavy equipment, there’s noise, there’s dust and so on. And so I would suggest that you would entertain the idea of allowing animal products processing, not just as an option in the IG (industrial general) zone, but also as an option in the county’s agricultural A zone.”
Such an amendment would allow the county’s board of zoning appeals to hear requests for animal processing from agriculturally zoned property owners and weigh any concerns from neighbors.
“Some cases might be worthy of approving, others may not, but at least it gives them an avenue,” Dale said.
One agricultural Hancock County landowner who’d like that avenue is Steve Rusche, who’s had about 35 acres in the southern part of the county for over 25 years, where he and his family raise livestock that they butcher and process for their own purposes.
“There seems to be a growing need in the county for people who can do processing, especially people who are looking for one-off, what we call custom butchering,” Rusche said. “We’re not looking for any retail sales or anything of that nature. Very small-scale.”
He noted meat lockers in the area are booked a year or two out.
Rusche added the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Indiana State Board of Animal Health have been to his property and are satisfied with his plans, but one box left to check is to ensure he’s within county zoning rules.
Along with his land, the land around his is zoned agricultural as well.
“It’s probably unlikely we’re going to get rezoned to industrial for one small, little piece,” Rusche said. “And we’re doing something we believe is an agriculture operation, has been forever — processing beef, hogs, deer. … We have experience doing it and we can do it the right way, the safe way. Hopefully it fills a need within the community as well.”
Plan commission members were open to the rule change, especially when it comes to properties like the Rusches’.
“They’re extremely rural,” member Bill Spalding said. “That would be a perfect area.”
Tom Nigh, president of the plan commission, agreed meat processing is highly sought after in the area. It was one of the motivations discussed earlier this summer for a commercial meat processing facility approved on industrially zoned land in Maxwell.
“I know there’s a real demand,” Nigh said.
He also agreed it wouldn’t be wise to change the Rusches’ land to industrial in order to pave the way for the zoning appeals board to consider an exception for animal processing.
“We don’t want to spot-zone,” Nigh said.
A public hearing on amending the county’s zoning code to allow animal processing to be considered as a special exception in agriculturally zoned areas is set for the plan commission’s meeting later this month, which is at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 26 at the Hancock County Courthouse Annex, 111 American Legion Place, Greenfield. The plan commission will vote to send the proposed change with a positive, negative or no recommendation to the Hancock County Board of Commissioners, which could approve the amendment in November. That would, at the soonest, allow the board of zoning appeals to start considering agriculturally zoned properties for special exceptions for animal processing in January 2022, as the board doesn’t meet in December.
“Hopefully this is not a controversial thing,” Rusche said. “This seems like an ag activity in an ag-zoned area.”
