The last slaughterhouse in Los Angeles County closed its doors for good about four months ago due to job violations, cattle crossings and, ultimately, bankruptcy. Now, with the site up for sale, the city of Pico Rivera is fighting for a chance to rethink it.
The city announced Tuesday its intention to participate in a public auction of the 3.74-acre meat processing facility, called Manning Beef, in an effort to prevent another meatpacking company from taking over the site.
“Hopefully we’ll buy it outright, or, at the end of the day, if we can work with another developer that wants to come in and share our same vision,” said Steve Carmona, Pico Rivera’s city manager, about Wednesday’s auction.
The property could be used for affordable housing, public open space, or for work focused on sustainable, plant-based food production, according to the city.
Carmona said Tuesday that the opening bid for the facility was $7 million.
Without disclosing the exact amount, the city manager said that Pico Rivera has set aside some funding for strategic housing and that this would be a good investment for the community.
Manning Beef was founded in the 1920s as a livestock business. Three decades later, a meatpacking plant opened its doors in Pico Rivera, said Ben Williamson, executive director of Animal Outlook, a national animal advocacy organization.
“I was born and raised in the city, and since I was a kid, it was always there,” Carmona said. “There have been some challenges in the community.”
Manning Beef made national headlines in 2021 when a small herd of cattle came out of an open gate and wandered through the night, wandering more than a mile into a residential area. One of the 40 suspects who escaped was charged with a family of four and was shot and killed by law enforcement officers who were helping to collect the animals.
The company has been under scrutiny by Williamson’s organization, Animal Outlook, after Virginia-based Smithfield Foods announced the closure of its Farmer John’s meatpacking plant in the city of Vernon in 2022.
Animal Outlook planted an undercover worker at Manning Beef in late 2024; they are employed from October to December.
“What we found is that the animals that will be slaughtered still seem to be locked up,” said Williamson. In one incident, a worker reported a crippled cow that had been shocked a total of 20 times, he said.
Manning Beef has accumulated 61 human rights violations between 2018 and 2024, for allegedly starving animals, beating them and electrocuting them excessively, he said.
In 2022, the Department of Agriculture shut down the facility after inspectors found a cow that was being raised during slaughter was still breathing, the result of unsuccessful attempts to shock the animal that inspectors called “repeated disobedience.”
In 2023 non-compliance records reviewed by The Times, Manning Beef is accused of multiple allegations of leaking roofs, separate incidents of vermin, unsanitary conditions and inefficiencies.
“This has been an issue in the animal protection community for about 10 years,” Williamson said. “We don’t want a killing field in Los Angeles County.”
Manning Beef was touted before Wednesday’s sale as “the dominant position in the regional protein supply chain with no direct competition within a 400-mile radius.”
“If someone has the idea of buying it with the intention of selling it to slaughter animals, they will have a lot of public opposition,” said Williamson. “There will always be protests and vigils.”
Animal rights activists plan to meet at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday morning at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, where the sale will take place, to voice their concerns, he said.
Actor Joaquin Phoenix is one of those who have lobbied for an end to slaughter. An animal rights activist saved two cows from slaughter, Liberty and Indigo, in 2020.
“This is our time to show that Pico Rivera chooses progress over violence,” Phoenix said in a statement, “that communities can heal, and that where suffering once reigned, compassion can grow.”
If the city is successful in purchasing the Manning Beef site, the initial funding will come from its special real estate fund, Carmona said, and then the city will seek funding sources, including federal grant programs and community support.
