A Cut Above the Rest: Meat Lab Centennial
A Cut Above the Rest: Meat Lab Centennial features the rich and unique history of the Meat Laboratory at SDSU for its centennial anniversary.
The Morrill Act of 1862 created land grant universities that offered agriculture classes across the nation. In 1893, the University of Minnesota offered the first meats course and later built its first meat laboratory. Other land grant universities soon followed.
In 1923, South Dakota State College of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts (now South Dakota State University) offered the first meat science class titled Farm Meats. Without the proper facilities, Professor Felix H. Helmreich taught the course at the City Meat Market in Brookings. Eight students participated in the original class. The coursework covered selecting the animals for butchering, curing and smoking meat, sausage making, wholesale cuts and meat pricing. The course was added to the course catalog with an expected 50 students taking the class the following year.
Two years later in 1925, the Stock Judging Pavilion expanded to include a modern abattoir or meat lab with freezers, coolers, holding and sticking pens, a sausage and rendering room, a smoker and classrooms. The addition of the Meat Lab allowed butchering classes to evolve into a meat science program that has conducted research, sold products and educated hundreds of students over the past 100 years.
