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Wisconsin’s meat processing, talent initiatives paying off

Wisconsin’s Ag Secretary says investments to help the state’s meat processors has been paying off. Randy Romanski says, “As a result of the grants, they are increasing their sales, they’re spurring additional economic investment, and they’re creating jobs.”

Romanski tells Brownfield the Meat Processor Infrastructure Grants Program was something the Governor and the Legislature agreed deserved funding in the last budget.  He says 23 projects have been funded and completed through this program, expanding capacity and creating 14 full-time jobs and 11 part-time jobs.

Romanski says the other initiative, the Meat and Poultry Supply Chain Resiliency program, began three years ago and awarded $8.1 million in grant fundingto meat processors. “The processors that are involved in this are pleased. Some of them have expanded. Some of them have gotten new equipment to become more efficient. Those are all good things, and even though we’ve got these two successful programs, I think we’ve got an opportunity to build on them.”

Romanski says that 8.1 million leveraged another 41.1 million in private meat processing plant investments.

Training the next generation

One of Wisconsin’s Meat Talent Development programs is collaborating with other on-campus career training to complete a huge goal.

Ag Secretary Randy Romanski tells Brownfield the team at Madison Area Technical College wants to train students using a mobile meat processing facility, but they’re not going to buy a trailer. “They’re building one, so as a result of that, their fabricators are involved, their electricians, and that’s a way where an investment in a mobile slaughter facility to teach meat processing is also going to be something that is hands-on apprenticeship kind of activity for some other students.”

Romanski says another success story is with the high school curriculum for meat talent development that a first in the nation, and other states are paying attention. “Other states are kind of knocking on the door saying, heh, that high school curriculum that you developed for meat processing is really interesting. Well, UW-River Falls created that for the program and people are coming to them saying can we use that same approach?”

Wisconsin has the Meat Talent Development Program for training new processors, and two separate grant programs to help existing processors modernize and expand their capacity.