This business processes animals from 6 county fairs and processes wild game during the fall and early winter season when hunting season peaks. Brothers Custom Processing operates a retail store offering fresh and frozen meat cuts and processed meat, seafood, a variety of seasoning and sauces, cheese and combination packs of seasoning and fat for customers who prefer to do their own wild game processing. Brothers Custom Processing also operates a catering service for large parties or events. The major meals that they cater include brisket, pork loin, pork rib, prime rib dinners and other menu items. Brothers Custom Processing has won several awards for their meat products at the American Association of Meat Processors (AAMP) and from the previous Hands Across the Rockies Conventions. Additionally, Steamboat Meat & Seafood Company in Steamboat, Colorado has graciously agreed to co-host the first night of convention. Look for their highlight story in the next newsletter! 

Pork sirloin deemed a ‘heart-healthy’ food
By Chris Scott from meatingplace.com on 2/7/2017

The American Heart Association (AHA) has designated pork sirloin as the latest heart-healthy food that provides benefits to consumers, the Pork Checkoff announced in a news release. Pork sirloin packages soon will carry the green Heart-Check mark that will offer shoppers a more convenient way to identify food products that go beyond what the organization called “often conflicting nutrition information.” The AHA’s Heart-Check Food Certification Program launched in 1995 and products must meet specific nutrition requirements to win the mark and join the list of heart-healthy products maintained at www.heartcheck.org. The Pork Checkoff added that it is working with the AHA to spotlight the heart-healthy benefits of pork sirloin roast.

Animal Rights Group Says Video Shows Abuse of Sheep
By Stephanie Strom, New York Times, February 2, 2017

Lamb inhabits a sleepy corner of the meat business in America, with far fewer sales than chicken, beef or pork and often raised by small producers. It is popular, however, among growing demographic groups like Latinos and Muslims, and some consumers who eat lamb because they believe the animals are raised more humanely, far from feedlots and the practices of large-scale meat production.

Now an animal rights group, Compassion Over Killing, has produced a video that it says shows repeated abuse of sheep at a California processing plant owned by the nation’s largest lamb producer. The approximately four-minute video was shot from May through November at a plant in Dixon, Calif., owned by Superior Farms, which sells to retail chains like Walmart and Kroger. It shows, among other things, a sheep struggling as a worker slices repeatedly at its carotid artery with a knife; some animals appear to continue breathing after their throats have been slit.

In another segment, a worker from a trucking company that delivers live animals to the plant repeatedly stabs an electric prod into a truck in an apparent effort to get the sheep inside to move. The video also shows workers changing “best by” dates on packages of lamb. Compassion Over Killing said the video was shot by Scott David, a supporter who worked at the plant for seven months while surreptitiously filming various aspects of its operations. The group contends that the images show violations of the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which decrees that animals must be “rendered insensible to pain” before they are slaughtered.

“We see a lot of ineffective stunning in the video because the animals are continuing to move after slaughter,” said Erica Meier, the group’s executive director. The video also raises questions about Superior Farms’s promise that all meat from the plant is butchered according to the Islamic rules of halal, or ritual slaughter. The company said Wednesday that the video was another example of an animal rights group misconstruing normal slaughter practices, with which most people are unfamiliar. “The video falsely alleges multiple violations” of the slaughter law, the company said in a statement.

It said the stunning procedures seen in the video ensure that a sheep is “absolutely insensitive to pain,” and that the use of the knife seen in the video was appropriate for slicing the carotid arteries and jugular veins. As for the changing of dates on packages, the company said labeling was often updated when new information was received or errors made. “The packaging label changes shown in the video are not the result of any falsification of dates,” it said.

It said it did not allow the use of prods in its operations, and would talk to its trucking company about the electric prod seen in the video. Compassion Over Killing has sent its video to the United States Department of Agriculture, which inspects the plant and can shut it down for violations of the slaughter law. The department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service “is reviewing the video and will take appropriate action as necessary,” Aaron Lavallee, a spokesman, wrote in an email. “We take the safety of our food supply and the welfare of all animals seriously.” The video shows a sheep being repeatedly stunned with a hand-held electronic device, a practice Mr. David said he saw several times. “You can see them tense up as the stunner hits them,” he said, “then their head droops a bit, and then they often begin to struggle again when the workers try to lay them on the slaughter line.”

Lester Castro Friedlander, a former inspector for the department who volunteers with various animal rights groups, viewed the video and said it was clear that some of the animals were in pain when their throats were slashed or their tails were cut off. The Humane Method of Slaughter Act requires that if an animal is stunned before slaughter, it must be immediately rendered unconscious. “The stunned animal shall remain in a state of surgical anesthesia through shackling, sticking and bleeding,” the law states. Mr. Friedlander said he believed that “the voltage probably wasn’t high enough to adequately stun the animals. And I think they know that otherwise, why do they have an electrical stunner right next to the place where the animal is being bled out? You don’t need that if the animal is properly stunned from the beginning.”

Americans eat less than a pound of lamb a year per capita, according to the Department of Agriculture. “While more lamb is consumed each year, the increase is absorbed by the increase in population, causing consumption to be flat” on a percentage basis, a department spokesman wrote in an email. The department’s data comes only from the facilities where it has inspectors; those plants, including the California one, process about 90 percent of the more than two million sheep slaughtered for meat.

They do not include state-inspected facilities or small, so-called custom slaughterhouses, which butcher animals brought to them by consumers or ranchers. Paul S. Kuber, an associate professor at Washington State University who formerly worked for Superior Farms, said a million or more sheep could be processed in such plants. He said he saw nothing in the video that violated any food safety or animal welfare laws. “The movement you see is part of the biochemical process the muscle goes through after death,” Professor Kuber said. “It’s a natural process — you’ll sometimes see a carcass move hours after an animal is dead.”

The Superior Farms plant in Dixon operates under the section of the federal law that governs ritual slaughtering, and the meat produced there is certified halal. The pelts of lambs slaughtered at the plant are used in produts like Ugg boots. Under halal rules, an animal cannot be dead before slaughter; slaughter must be accomplished with a single slash to the neck, and a prayer must be said before each animal is slaughtered, said Syed Farhat Quadri, the halal administrator and auditor for the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America.

“We have to make sure the blood is drained completely before we start removing the ears or the head,” Mr. Quadri said. “There should not be any processing unless the animal is completely dead.’” So practices like cutting the tail of a live sheep is forbidden. In the video, no prayers appear to be said as the worker slashes the animal’s throat several times. Anders Hemphill, director of marketing at Superior Farms, said in an email that the plant operates under “a modified halal process” overseen by a third-party halal certifier. “This is to allow for proper humane treatment of the animals and also to ensure food safety,” Mr. Hemphill wrote.

Temple Grandin, the noted animal welfare expert, last year narrated a video shot at the plant as part of the Glass Walls Project, an effort by the American Meat Institute to show consumers how animals are slaughtered. She said that typically, slaughter under halal rules was done “with just a single cut. But every halal certifying agency is different and has different things it will accept.”

Mr. David said he was hired last May to work in the “case ready” department of the plant, where he and other workers labeled packages of lamb and put them in boxes for shipping. He noticed that when products didn’t ship as expected, his colleagues sometimes changed dates on packaging. One segment of the video shows workers pulling white “best by” stickers dated Sept. 28, 2016, from packages of lamb chops and replacing them with stickers dated Oct. 13, 2016. Mr. David filmed more than a dozen instances in which when workers changed dates on packages of lamb. No federal rule governs the dating of food, although the Agriculture Department last year set out to revamp its guidance on such labels, noting that they were confusing to consumers.

Currently, the “Best if Used By,” “Best if Used Before,” and “Sell By” dates do not indicate the safety of any product other than baby formula. In October, Mr. David was moved to the room where pelts are handled in Superior’s Dixon plant. (Superior prides itself on wasting none of the animal, and its pelts are shipped to companies like the boot maker UGG.) “That’s where I first got access to film the live animals and how they’re slaughtered,” he said. Mr. David said he saw Agriculture Department inspectors at the plant. “You’d see them in the morning looking over lambs about to be slaughtered,” he said. “They didn’t linger in the slaughter area; they mostly just passed through it.

World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates
from the United States Department of Agriculture Office of the Chief Economist, February 9, 2017

LIVESTOCK and POULTRY- Estimated red meat and poultry production for 2016 was adjusted to reflect December slaughter data. Total red meat and poultry production for 2017 is lowered, largely reflecting decreased pork and poultry forecasts. Beef production is raised. Placements and marketings for the year are raised, resulting in higher cattle slaughter. The January Cattle inventory report estimated that total cattle and calf numbers on January 1, 2017 increased for the third consecutive year. Beef cow numbers were above 2016, and producers indicated they were holding more heifers for addition to the breeding herd.

The report also indicated a year-over-year increase in the number of cattle outside feedlots. The January Cattle on Feed report showed higher than expected placement numbers in December, implying that larger numbers of fed cattle will be marketed during the spring quarter. Cattle weights are reduced for 2017 as producers are expected to remain current in feedlot marketings. Pork production in the first quarter is reduced on the current pace of slaughter and slightly lighter carcass weights. Broiler production is lowered as WASDE-562-4 increases in production in the first quarter are more than offset by reductions in the second half of the year. Table egg production is increased on hatchery data and expectations of relatively favorable returns, but this is more than offset by a lowered hatching egg production forecast. No changes were made to turkey production.

Livestock trade estimates for 2016 are adjusted to reflect December data. For 2017, forecast beef imports are raised on expectations of higher shipments of processing beef from Oceania. Robust demand for U.S. beef supports higher forecast beef exports for the year. No changes are made to pork, poultry and egg trade forecasts. Cattle, hog, and broiler price forecasts are raised to reflect demand strength. Turkey prices are forecast lower on current prices. Egg prices are increased on current price strength.

Membership Form for Colorado Processors Registration for Suppliers Cured Meat Contest Rules

2017 Convention Schedule

Directory for Members

THURSDAY, April 6, 2017

2:30 PM Registration/Welcome Mixer at The Clarion Inn

3:00 PM Bus Trip to Steamboat Meat & Seafood

4:00 PM Tour and Demonstration at Steamboat Meat & Seafood with heavy appetizers and drinks

FRIDAY, April 7, 2017

Sharpest Knife Contest Entries All Day

8:00 AM Breakfast and Presidents Welcome
@ The Clarion Inn
CAMP – Darren Sydow

WMPA – Kelcey Christiansen

Supplier Introductions

Introduction – Cody Gifford

9:00 AM Brother’s Custom Processing Tour

10:00 AM  Wildgame Sausage Demonstration
by Jon Frohling from Scott Pec., Inc. and Chad Hollenbaugh from Con Yeager Spice Co. @ Brother’s Custom Processing

12:00 PM Lunch and Supplier Interaction @ The Clarion Inn

1:00 PM AAMP updates, Nutrition Labeling and Fermented Sausage Presentation by Glen Meyers from Penn State University @ The Clarion Inn

4:00–6:00 PM CAMP Discussion with Cody Gifford & Supplier Time in the Claridome
@ The Clarion Inn.

Please take advantage of this time to visit our incredibly supportive suppliers!

6:00–7:00 PM Taste of the Rockies Dinner @ Brothers Custom Processing.

7:00–10:00 PM Casino Night Fundraiser @ The Clarion Inn. Blackjack, Craps, and Poker. $20 unlimited buy-in.

SATURDAY, April 8, 2017

Cured Meats Competition 8:00-5:30 Sharpest Knife Contest Until 12:00

7:00 AM Breakfast @ The Clarion Inn; late registration

8:00 AM Profitable Pork Fabrication Demonstration by Dave Satterwhite from Brother’s Custom Processing @ Brother’s Custom Processing Facility

10:00 AM Flavored Bacon Demonstration by Darren Sydow from Hudson Lockers @ Brother’s Custom Processing

11:00 AM  WMPA & CAMP Meetings, Presentations from Wyoming Department of Agriculture and Colorado Department of Agriculture @ The Clarion Inn

12:00 PM Lunch @ The Clarion Inn & Supplier Interaction

1:00 PM Combined WMPA, CAMP & Suppliers Meeting @ The Clarion Inn

2:30 PM Preventative Maintenance and Repair of Refrigeration and Equipment Class @ The Clarion Inn

3:30 PM Supplier Interaction in the Claridome
@ The Clarion Inn
This is a great time to network and check out what new products/equipment/ supplies are out there.

4:15 PM Cured Meats Competition Results @ The Clarion Inn

6:30 PM Banquet Happy Hour @ The Clarion Inn

7:00 PM Prime Rib Banquet @ The Clarion Inn.
Events include: Student introductions, 10 Year Supplier Awards, Sharpest Knife
Results, Taste of the Rockies Results, Overall Grand Champion/Best of Show Award, Student Cured Meat Awards, Sharpest Cleaver Award, Raffle Drawings

Early registration is always appreciated. Please fill out the attached (links above) registration form and mail to Mark Otteman at:

Otteman’s Inc. Meat Processing,

226 E. 1st St., Flagler, CO 80815.

All participants must be a member of either WMPA or CAMP

Basic Cost Information:
First Person Registered                    $115
Each Additional Person                     $75
Tickets for Banquet only                    $45
Cured Meat Entry:                             $15 per entry

Registration includes all meals, hands-on classes, seminars and banquet. Complete Information about convention costs can be found on the registration forms.

Additional Event Information:

Scholarship Raffle & Casino Night
In addition to selling raffle tickets for various wonderful items donated by our members, we will be hosting a Casino Night on Friday evening of which the proceeds from both fundraisers will go toward college scholarship funds.

Cured Meat Competition
Please see the complete set of Cured Meat Competition Contest Rules posted on our web site at: www.Colorado-amp.com If you have any questions, contact: Jerry or Darren Sydow of Hudson Lockers at 303.536.4777.

Raffle Tickets will be available throughout the convention for $1 each or 6 for $5. Raffle items make our scholarship programs a huge success. Any item you could donate would be welcome.

Sharpest Knife Contest
$10 entry fee, 50/50 split for scholarship.

Taste of the Rockies
This is a unique event which has become a highlight of our convention. Suppliers & Processors are encouraged to participate. There is no entry free and the rules are simple. Simply prepare a favorite main dish and/or salad/dessert and register your entry before the 5:30 PM deadline. You are responsible for prep/presentation. You should expect 60–80 sample size servings. Electrical outlets are avail-able for prep. Everyone enjoys the entries for lunch and vote on the best Meat/Main Dish and Salad/Dessert.

Students are encouraged to enter the Cured Meat Competition. One entry per student, no entry fee, and we’ll throw in a banquet ticket so you can attend the awards ceremony. Cash awards!