Posted: 01.05.2010

It's not physically a new building - but it's a new tool for building business for Wisconsin's specialty meat industry.

Wisconsin Ag Secretary, Rod Nilsesteun, has announced a partnership between the WI Department og Agriculture, and the state's meat-processers to help grow their business.

The Specialty Meat Development Center will be housed within the WI Department of Agriculture, and has five key goals according to the new president of the center, Bob Andorfer. The center will support:  business development, product development, labeling and packaging, market development, and food safety and quality.

About 95 percent of Wisconsin’s state-inspected plants have fewer than 25 employees and “have little-to-no capacity to tackle growing their businesses,” Andorfer said. “Our goal is to help these processors take their businesses to the next level while ensuring Wisconsin’s meat products are always the highest quality available.”

Wisconsin has more state-inspected meat facilities than any other state in the country. There are 289 official state-inspected meat-processing facilities and 65 slaughter plants operating in Wisconsin, according to state officials.

It is estimated that these facilities produce more than 77 million pounds of meat and meat products bearing the state-inspected stamp.

The total impact of the state’s meat industry to the Wisconsin economy is $12.3 billion and the industry accounts for more than 19,400 jobs in the state, according to the state. Any Wisconsin meat-processing facility is eligible to apply for assistance from the center.

Nilsestuen said the center will help find new markets, develop new cured and specialty meat products and provide training and market development support to meat processors seeking to improve their businesses and increase sales.

There are even more quality and marketing opportunities in the works for the states meat processors that will likely be unveiled by the UW-Madison this spring.

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