Meat Science

Our Program

With a new Meat Processing Center completed in the fall of 2011, Cal Poly’s Meat Science students are able to participate in the entire value chain of meat processing, from harvesting to packaging, in a next-generation university facility.

Student involvement is valued as a key aspect of the Meat Science program—students not only manufacture products and provide leadership for meat sales, but they also manage the meat lab and the crews of students working in the facility.

Learning in this environment gives students practical application to classroom education, as well as an idea of the various jobs available in the industry. Furthermore, opportunities such as the meat industry tour class create more ways for students to tangibly discover the world of meat science. Students in the Meat Science program diversify in interests from management, microbiology, chemistry and biochemistry to engineering, culinary, sales and marketing. Upon graduation, these students are prepared to enter an equivalently diverse industry, an industry considered to be one of the fastest changing among the food industries.

I was focusing on animal nutrition when I came into Cal Poly and took the Meat Science class. I fell in love with meat science and started working in the lab. I have been working there for three years, have worked for the Sara Lee Corporation on an internship and plan to go into meat science product development.

Tricia Harlan, fourth-year animal science major