{"id":778,"date":"2013-03-01T21:21:08","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T03:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uwpowerswi.com\/?p=778"},"modified":"2015-04-13T14:11:07","modified_gmt":"2015-04-13T19:11:07","slug":"meats-made-in-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/meats-made-in-wisconsin\/","title":{"rendered":"Meats Made in Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"

UW-Madison is partnering with businesses, the state and other stakeholders to develop a Wisconsin meats brand that could emulate the success of the state\u2019s artisan cheese.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Geiss Meat Service in Merrill has been butchering livestock for farmers in Lincoln County and surrounding areas since 1956, cutting about 6,000 pounds of beef a day\u2014that\u2019s an average of eight to 10 beef cattle\u2014into fresh steaks, chops, loins and roasts. But when third-generation owner Andrew Geiss took over the company in 2005, he was ready to try something new.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to figure out a way to build up a retail business by expanding our sausage line,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought there was more money to be made by diversifying our products.\u201d He added a smokehouse and started taking basic meat science classes at UW\u2013Madison\u2019s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS)\u2014and soon discovered a satisfaction in crafting his own specialty meats that meat cutting alone couldn\u2019t provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pride and art that goes into it. For instance, getting that perfectly round shape and uniformity in color when making a ham,\u201d says Geiss. \u201cYou can\u2019t imagine how much one thing in the smokehouse\u2014for example, the humidity levels\u2014changes everything, and how much work is involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the business side wasn\u2019t going as well as he had hoped. \u201cHonestly, I was at a point where we needed to make some serious changes with the consistency of our products in order to please customers and expand sales,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He found exactly the help he needed in 2010, when he was accepted into the inaugural class of the Master Meat Crafter training program at CALS. He and his classmates\u201416 men and one woman from small meat operations all around the state\u2014traveled to Madison regularly over the course of two years for rigorous, hands-on instruction in meat science and processing, covering such areas as fresh meats, fermented and cured meats, cooked and emulsified sausage and meat microbiology and food safety.<\/p>\n

That training earned Geiss the right to use the formal designation of Master Meat Crafter. But even more than the title, the program gave him the skills he needed to improve the quality, yields and markup on his products. \u201cNow we\u2019re doing a ton of different kinds of sausages, and everything is turning out just perfectly,\u201d he reports. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t have to second-guess anything. I know that everything is exactly the way that I want it to be, and it turns out the same every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The industry already has taken note of his improvements. Last summer Geiss Meat Service entered products for the first time in the American Cured Meat Championships and won awards in four categories, including first place in cooked ring bologna.<\/p>\n

But even seasoned meat crafters see the value of the master course. The debut class included Louis E. Muench, a third-generation sausage maker who was inducted into the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame in 2009. Since 1970, Louie\u2019s Finer Meats in Cumberland has been crafting ham, bacon, bologna, breakfast links, salami, summer sausage and dozens of other products\u2014and winning more than 300 state, national and international awards for their quality. Its creative staff also designs an extraordinary assortment of bratwurst, including applewurst, bacon cheeseburger, blueberry, pumpkin pie and wild rice and mushroom.<\/p>\n

Why would someone with that level of expertise be interested in going back to school? \u201cThere\u2019s so much technology that changes every day,\u201d Muench says. As examples he cites new antimicrobials developed to combat foodborne pathogens and new government food safety, labeling and operations-related regulations, including changes that will for the first time allow Wisconsin\u2019s state-inspected small processors to sell across state borders. \u201cFor our business to succeed in the long run, we need to keep current on everything and try to pass on as much knowledge as we can to keep the quality and the food safety up,\u201d says Muench.<\/p>\n

Within a year of completing the program, Muench had encouraged his son Louis and his brother William to sign up with the next group of students.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the kind of success that the Master Meat Crafter program\u2019s key partners\u2014CALS, UW-Extension, the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) and the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors (WAMP)\u2014envisioned when they determined that state-of-the-art training was needed to take the state\u2019s specialty meat production to an even higher level.<\/p>\n

By Mary Makarushka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UW-Madison is partnering with businesses, the state and other stakeholders to develop a Wisconsin meats brand that could emulate the success of the state\u2019s artisan cheese. Geiss Meat Service in Merrill has been butchering livestock for farmers in Lincoln County and surrounding areas since 1956, cutting about 6,000 pounds of beef a day\u2014that\u2019s an average […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","institution":[103],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-778","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=778"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}