Some UF students learn best in a sterile classroom with a pencil. Others prefer a sterile meat processing facility with a band saw.
The UF Meat Processing Center sells retail meat out of the Department of Animal Sciences, 2250 Shealy Drive, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Friday.
“Meat cutting is almost a lost art,” said Byron Davis, assistant manager.
Two full-time employees, eight undergraduate UF students and three to four temporary graduate students work at the nonprofit facility, he said.
“It gives an appreciation of where their meat comes from,” Davis said.
It’s a two-mile drive from the field where the cows and pigs are raised to the processing facility.
The teaching hinders the profit of the operation, but the hands-on involvement is important to the students.
“This is the best experience you can get,” said Tommy Estevez, assistant manager of retail.
He said students can go into slaughtering, food safety, research and development, and other fields after the kind of work they do with him.
“My No. 1 goal is teaching,” he said.
Estevez worked with meat for 22 years at Publix, so he has the chops.
The retail store makes $5,000 every Friday, he said. Almost all of the money is used to buy more animals to raise and eventually be used to teach students.
He said he tries to instill his passion for butchering in his pupils.
“We enjoy it so much,” he said. “It really is a rush.”
One of his students now runs a meat facility for White Oak Pastures, a Publix meat supplier.
Estevez said many people have a negative opinion of meat because of a critical media.
“This meat tastes the way it used to taste,” he said. “. . . we change the mindset of what food is, one person at a time.”
Celia Martin, 58, has been buying her meat from UF for a year.
“You know exactly what you are getting,” Martin said.
As someone who regularly bikes 20 miles and tries to eat a healthy diet, Martin said she appreciates the fresh taste of the meat and the helpful staff.
“They know their meat,” she said.
Students say they appreciate the opportunity to learn a useful trade.
Adam Spann, a second-year UF agriculture and biological engineering graduate student, has worked at the meat processing center since 2004 and learned about the job from his brother.
Spann, 25, said although butchering isn’t his career of choice, he now has a fallback career in a down economy.
“My next job will suck compared to this,” he said.
Contact Benjamin S. Brasch at bbrasch@alligator.org.
