Day 4!

Today we got to visit Triumph Foods, Green Dirt Farm, and Monsanto field plots. The morning started off with an eye opening experience; Triumph foods is a plant that harvests pigs only and they harvest about 21,000 pigs per day. I was surprised by a few things on this tour. Right off the bat we watched the assembly line from above; this part of the line dealt with meat that was already separated into cuts and needed more attention then went to packaging. I was extremely surprised by how many people there were rather than machines; they had about 1,500 employees. There were people who would only stand there and turn the meat so it could go up the conveyer belt. After watching this for a while we toured the rest of the facility, and eventually ended up at the kill floor. We saw the whole process from when the pigs walked in until the very end. Their slaughter process is very humane; the pigs are exposed to CO2 and it makes them unconscious/brain dead by lack of oxygen. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and I thought it was a great tour.

Green Dirt Farm was a sheep dairy that made their own cheese. They milked about 80 sheep and each sheep only produces 4lbs of milk per day. They are a fairly small operation that hopes to expand in the future. This was a unique tour and I’m glad we got to experience something so different from what I think of when I hear dairy.

At the Monsanto field plots we went out to their fields and saw what they had going on. As we have learned, the main crops over here are corn and soybeans. We got to see what they had planted and hear more about what they were doing and their research. These guys were also very knowledgeable and happy to answer our questions.

After our tours of the day we had dinner at a Cajun restaurant I really liked it! I was excited to try something new that I couldn’t get at home.