The University of Kentucky's Meat Science Program has been teaching students how to process animals into food for over 100 years.

But in recent years, the extension program's meat cutting school has grown in popularity, teaching professional butchers and amateur enthusiasts alike.

Our main goal is teaching and research here.

For about the last 17 years or so, we've had a mechanic school here where we bring folks in.

You know, you want to learn had a you know, kept me process animals.

We do that for you.

Here we talk about the history of meat science.

We talk about the history of me.

We talk about how we keep our food supply safe.

We talk about meat inspection and food safety.

And then we'll spend one morning down here and we'll process an animal here on the harvest floor.

We'll do it.

And then we guide them through the other animals as well.

And then those animals go into those carcasses, go into the cooler, and then we learn a little bit more about what makes meat ran.

Why is some meat more tender and tougher than others?

And we we talk about some meat quality aspects in the afternoon and then the final day all those animals that we harvested the carcasses.

We show you how to cut them up and you get hands on practice of how to cut those up yourself.

Our attendees, it's anybody who wants to come.

And over the years, we've seen an evolution.

So it started with, say, a large grocery store chain here in Kentucky, Kroger.

And we started training a lot of their meat cutters.

And then we saw a need for they expanded beyond them, what we were doing with Kroger.

And so we will get some folks that are some of our meat processors were selling their people to us for training.

Others just want to know how to do it.

We actually have one guy who it was like his anniversary present from his wife.

The pandemic, I think, scared a lot of people.

You know, when you go in the grocery store and I guess as Americans we've gotten comfortable with, there's always tomatoes, there's always beef, there's always lettuce, there's always ice cream.

And the pandemic kind of showed us that it's not that easy.

And so I think, folks, because that's where we had right after the pandemic, we had a lot of people want to know how to do this myself so I can take care of my family.

Those are kind of fading off a little bit.

And now we're getting some of the people who want to enter the workforce.

And again, the other homesteaders as well, obviously, you you see that?

Okay, I can take this and go to work for one of our local meat processors here in the state.

I can go to work for a meat department in a grocery store.

Those are the obvious ones.

But some of our students that come through our program, we've got folks that are USDA inspectors.

We got folks that are you know, former students are USDA graders.

Got another one.

Got a master's with me.

She's procurement for a for a large pizza company here in the state.

So in some respects, she might be doing the Lord's work for some folks wanting pizza.

So we got others that go into other aspects of research and development.

We are now by three and four generations removed from the farm.

So it's important for people to be able to understand why we do what we do.

Understanding why pork is pink and beef is red, why this cat works better on the on and grill, whereas this one works better as a roast in an oven and so on and so forth.

We've lost a lot of that.

I think it's important to have meat cutting education available for folks because it's it really truly is a dying art.

The meat lab plans to move into a new off campus facility that will allow for larger class sizes in the future.