The Meat Laboratory at SDSU is working with the South Dakota Pork Producers Council to harvest animals and provide state inspected pork sides for further processing to help support the state’s pork producers. Pork Council Executive Director Glenn Muller says this has helped them get their animals harvested and food to those who need it.

The Meat Lab’s goal is to harvest and process 90 pigs per week through August 14 of this year. Muller says they’ve also been able to team up with local locker plants and those who need meat at home., which has helped with the backlog of hogs.

He says they’ve also been able to get assistance from SDSU extension in managing their feeding so as to hold back some of their animals from needing to be processed right away.

Muller says they lost about a month of their harvesting capacity so it’s going to take some time to get that back and ramped up.