The food students eat is about to get a lot more local. Beginning in September, San Luis Obispo meat-lovers will have access to some of the freshest, locally-sourced meat around.
During fall quarter, classes will be taught in the J and G Lau Meat Processing Center, the newest meat processing plant in the country and the only one in history to be 90 percent privately funded, according to animal science department head Andy Thulin.
The center cost more than 6.5 million dollars — 5.5 million of which came from private donors. The facility had its grand opening Oct. 22, 2011, but is still waiting on implementing several programs, such as the Food and Drug Administration’s Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) food safety management system, before opening for instruction.
HACCP and various animal science classes will be taught, but students from other colleges also stand to gain from the new center.
“The Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena has expressed an interest in possibly partnering with us,” Thulin said. “Companies in product development are looking to hire, and food has become top of mind across the country. That’s another aspect that we’re now able to capture.” Thulin adding that the building’s new packaging facilities will allow them to work with the Orfalea College of Business’ packaging students as well.
The nearly 15,000-square-foot plant contains everything from a harvest floor to a commercial-grade kitchen.
“We wanted Cal Poly to take leadership and provide food for a local population,” Thulin said. “This is also the first time that (animal science) students will have the opportunity to learn product development.”
The facility will help produce two new Cal Poly brands. “Cal Poly Produced” products, Thulin said, are meat products made with meat from our animals and processed in the lab. He said some of the incentive for creating this brand came from a high demand from local restaurants for local meats.
“We would control breeding, birthing, producing, harvesting, processing — everything, all the way to giving someone a pleasurable dining experience,” Thulin said.
The second brand, “Cal Poly Processed,” might deal with meats from other, larger distributors but would allow students the opportunity to learn how to work with the product, possibly through marinades or trimming.
Thulin said he hopes the facility will create opportunities for endowed professorships, but has worked closely with current faculty to make the facility a reality.
Robert Delmore oversees the meat processing facilities and teaches meat science courses. Delmore will teach the HAACP class in the new building.
“Anything I do has to have student benefit, or else I’m not interested,” he said. “With the new facility, students will be able to complete broader types of projects. It’s a better, more realistic setting.”
Delmore also serves on the National Meat Association’s Education Committee; several corporate donors for the new facility are members of the National Meat Association’s Board of Directors. Thulin and Delmore worked closely together in the fundraising process, a process that Thulin said took four years.
“Did it take a little longer? Sure,” Delmore said. “But we did something that, in my mind, is unheard of. We raised enough to build this facility and for a small university, that’s unbelievable.”
Yosemite Meat Co. Inc., a company founded by John and Gay Lau in Modesto, Calif., contributed more than $1 million to the center which now bears their names. Other donors include Agri Beef Co. and Foster Farms. However, the funding process was not without controversy.
One donor, Harris Ranch Beef Co., was in the process of reconsidering a $500,000 donation in 2009 when controversial food writer Michael Pollan was asked to speak alone at Cal Poly. A letter from Harris Ranch Beef Co. Chairman David Wood to former Cal Poly President Warren Baker asked that Pollan’s views not be presented unopposed. The letter also expressed anger at the personal viewpoints of professor Robert Rutherford, who Wood said called grain-fed systems such as the one used by Harris Ranch Beef Co. “unsustainable.”
After similar calls for balance came from other university donors and agribusinesses, Pollan agreed to take part in a panel discussion, and Rutherford later voluntarily discontinued his teaching of Issues in Animal Agriculture (ASCI 476).
Thulin said at the time of the speech, Harris Ranch Beef Co. had not yet pledged any money to the facility.
“At that time, there was no paperwork,” Thulin said. “A year after that event, they still came forth with their funding. They still believed in it.”
Thulin said he personally has no problem with private funding for public universities.
“I don’t have a concern, as long as you manage the process,” Thulin said. “A donation is a donation, there should be nothing given in return.”
Rutherford, who is Cal Poly’s sheep specialist and teaches sheep management, animal agriculture and holistic management said he considers the controversy water under the bridge, and he made the decision to discontinue teaching the issues in animal agriculture course.
While he won’t be using the facility for instruction, he calls the facility a “critical linkage in the marketing of our lambs.”
Rutherford said the nearest meat inspection plant is Creston Valley Meats in Paso Robles, a facility more than 20 miles from Cal Poly.
“It’s very expensive to take three or four lambs to Creston Valley Meats,” Rutherford said. “Now we can have lambs processed on campus. It has come to me that the more we can do to reduce stress on animals before harvest, the better.”
Rutherford said he believes this plant, while relatively small, could function as an example of a “well-designed, well-constructed building that’s heavily used in education, food processing, food safety and the entire process.”
The J and G Lau Meat Processing Center is building 155, located past the Poultry Science Facility on Stenner Creek Road. It is expected to be open for instructional usage by September.