Oct 3, 2024
Story Submitted by The Eighth Grade Agriculture Students
On September 11th, Our exploratory agriculture class took a trip to the Milo Locker Meats. We left the school at about 9:00 a.m. and took a bus to get there. We returned to the school at about 12:30 p.m.
Our class consists of eleven students and a very nice chaperone, our chaperone is our assistant agriculture advisor, Ashley Dittmer. She was very kind and offered to chaperone for us. We all loaded up on the bus and got on our way.
We traveled to Milo Locker Meats which is located in Milo Iowa. When we arrived at Milo Locker Meats we were greeted by our tour guide Ashley. She took us to the fully processed smoking room first to avoid any cross contamination. Then she took us through a hallway to the processing room where they were breaking swine into different wholesale cuts. After that we went to the cooler room where they store the cattle and swine carcasses. As we progressed to the end of the tour we were able to see the kill floor where they butcher livestock. They explained how the captive bolt works and have a 22 Caliber rifle for backup. When the tour ended we got to eat some beef sticks that were processed in the facility.
We went on this tour to help expand our knowledge on the topic and importance of meat processing. During this tour, we got to see how they use different machinery to transfer and break down the carcass. We learned about the different ways certain meats were processed, cooked and stored. This tour was an amazing learning opportunity and an amazing experience.