T&E Mission Statement
We are in the health business: creating healthy customers, healthy regional farmers, healthy workers, and a healthy food community by connecting local farmers to local eaters, retaining food dollars in our local communities, providing a safe, healthy, and affordable food supply, and healing the earth by promoting ecologically sound farming practices.

Joel Salatin and Joe CloudWhy T&E Meats
In 2007 Joe Cloud joined forces with farmer, author, and activist Joel Salatin to save one of the few remaining independent, USDA-inspected abbatoirs in the Mid-Atlantic.

The existing butcher shop had been named "T&E Meat Market" after Tommy and Erma May, the previous owners. Cloud and Salatin renamed it "T&E: True and Essential" to highlight the crucial role meat processing plays in the local food ecosystem and to mark the difference between sustainabily-produced local meats and the industrial system.

T&E enables farmers in Virginia to raise and direct market quality livestock by providing excellent processing services under USDA inspection.

A small-scale facility like T&E Meats skillfully and respectfully butchers its livestock compared to the mechanised and inhumane systems common to most large commercial meat processing plants.

We are the only remaining full-service butcher shop and abbatoir in the Shenandoah Valley.   Quality local meats processed at T&E are found in the area's finest restaurants and retail establishments in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C.

Joe Cloud is an owner and serves as T & E’s General Manager. He is typically on-site and available to answer your questions.

Joel Salatin is T&E’s other owner. He is typically found operating Polyface Farms in Swoope, Virginia, or on the road leading seminars on pasture-raised animal husbandry systems.

Tommy May ran T&E for 35 years before passing the batonT&E Meats History
T&E has a long history as a family-owned butcher shop and meat packing plant.

Built in 1939, Tom May and his wife Erma ran T&E for 35 years before selling the business to Joe and Joel.

Today, T&E Meats enjoy customers from all walks of life. A common thread between them all is an appreciation for fine quality meat and a desire to support responsible local businesses, keeping those valuable food dollars in our community.