East Campus Meat Sales offer local meat with an education on the side
Meat Sales
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Athens, Ga is a city thriving on the idea of what’s “Classic”. With weekly farmers markets and under the title of having a municipal scene with local and cultural flare, Athens has made it’s mark as one of the classiest college towns in the nation.
The University of Georgia, let alone, is one of the most significant artisans of Athenian culture. Within the University itself, there lies multiple entities of local influence that still survive that provide to the students of UGA. One of these lasting entities of local business still on campus is the University Meat Sales.
The UGA Meat Sales are held weekly every Friday afternoon from 1-5 PM in the Rhodes Animal and Dairy Science building right in the heart of ECV.
Ryan Crowe, professor and lab manager for the meat sales, promotes the local uniqueness of the sales within this interview. He discusses the technique of “dry aging” meats such as beef that gives an enhanced natural flavoring to it. He also points out how this very technique is uniquely provided by the UGA meat sales because it is a technique most conventional meat marketers do not utilize in the processing of their meat products.
Professor Crowe and Dr. John Bertrand sit down with me in two separate interviews to discuss the UGA meat sales. They discuss the meat itself, ranging from beef, pork, and even lamb. Lamb, however, is a rare meat and as Professor Crowe states it is more of a “seasonal” product.
Both men heavily discuss the education provided by the meat sales. The meat sales themselves are a result of classes provided in the Animal and Dairy Science Department. These classes, as Dr. Bertrand specifies, are set up to give students hand-on experiences with the meat as well as with testing the meat in ways to study the quality of the meat, how to enhance the quality of the meat, and to process the meat “from birth to plate”.
The UGA Meat Sales provide meat that is all locally grown either on the UGA farms or from local farmers within the state of Georgia. As one of the lasting entities of local business in Athens nay even on the UGA campus, the Meat Sales have survived for decades.
This meat sale, again, is held every Friday from 1-5 PM. In this interview, Professor Crowe and Dr. Bertrand go in depth with the sales and how they provide not only a great quality of meat to the University, but also a great education as well.