Old Photos of Oakland Beef Plant
Working nigh waking hours since COVID-19 hit, Oakland Meat Processing Plant in Oakland, Nebraska is busting at the seams with business concern and eager to expand.
While their current building is meant for 700-weight carcass cattle, they're coming in closer to 1,000 pounds lately considering customers take to look so long for a spot on the chopping block due to the pandemic.
Owner Mike Boell will purchase land and is lining up contractors for a whole new facility, an upgraded locker plant in Oakland. It's expected to open side by side autumn.
Boell has been in the business 26 years. This COVID year has been both hectic and heartwarming when the Boell family flung open their doors to help offer beef to local Nebraskans and people around the region.
"We were here working during the whole pandemic, including our two young children who are 6 years old and iii. They loaded cattle and they know the swing gates. My 3 year erstwhile was shifting the stick truck while Dad was driving," said Anna Zeleny, daughter-in-law, receptionist, cattle supervisor and all-effectually valued employee at Oakland Processing Plant, who'due south worked in that location for seven years.
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Information technology's a family that sticks together through thick and thin, during the COVID peak and beyond. A small grouping works at the plant, but they're big on caring and outreach because fresh meat buying habits of the boilerplate consumer changed in the pandemic.
"We stayed open. We never shutdown the found, and we fed families with meat in Lincoln, Omaha, Sioux City, Iowa and South Dakota and a homo drove up from Texas who bought meat," Zeleny said. "People chosen who didn't know a farmer or how to go meat. They drove here and bought 150 pounds of meat for family and friends when they arrived. We kept Oakland fed."
The Boells as well brought in 154 of their own cattle to help procedure and sell them to local families and other customers. That was a large modify from last year when they brought in just twenty of their livestock.
"We put equally much beef into our cooler as we physically could fit," Zeleny said.
Working with family unit, they weren't at high risk for exposure to COVID similar workers at large meat packing plants.
The Oakland Meat Processing plant in Oakland, Nebraska is ready to open its doors.
"We live together and we were at work together, and nosotros were the only people nosotros interacted with," she said.
A grant program to assist small meat processors like the Oakland business organisation is moving through Congress right now. Republican Congressman Jeff Fortenberry from Nebraska and Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine introduced legislation in late September to support small-scale meat and poultry processors through 'The Strengthening Local Processing Act.' Information technology will expand options for local producers and assist smaller facilities as they suit to the coronavirus pandemic to meet need.
Currently, the Boells are going through the grant process, in hopes of getting funding before they build the new constitute.
A small Kansas is establish is looking to aggrandize, too. The Clay Center Locker Found got then busy when COVID hit that possessor Brad Dickmann recently opened a second processing institute a one-half 60 minutes abroad in Junction City, Kansas. He is already booked well into 2021 with a waiting list into 2022.
"Fifty-fifty with this 2nd locker plant now in Junction City, the amount we're processing is overwhelming," said Dieckmann on Oct. 26.
The Junction City location used to be a processing facility, only has used for other purposes since. They closed it in 2003, but re-opened this fall to handle the massively increased load that came with the COVID pandemic.
Dieckmann's plant was so busy that that he had to delay the launch of a retail store for selling beef hasty, summer sausage and bratwurst.
It's a hectic simply fruitful time in the beef processing business concern.
As Zeleny put it, "Nosotros're doing information technology all – answering the phones, wrapping the meat, human resources, advert."
With all the negatives surrounding COVID, meat processors are glad to have the business.
Amy Hadachek tin be reached at editorial@midwestmessenger.com.
Source: https://www.agupdate.com/livestockroundup/news/livestock/small-meat-processors-expand-in-the-wake-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/article_9316f204-3fd8-11eb-bbf9-e3dcbe765b08.html
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