Cougar Quality Meats is currently selling various cuts of beef and pork as a means of ensuring the continuance of the WSU Meats Lab’s contribution to students’ education.

Meats Lab Faculty Coordinator Jan Busboom said the facility allows educators to provide hands-on meat industry experience for students in the animal science and food science departments. He said the revenue provided by the Cougar Quality Meats sales goes toward Meats Lab expenses such as employee pay and new equipment.

“We’re really working hard right now to generate income to not only support current expenses, but to build up equity so we can buy new equipment,” Busboom said.

He said the lab doesn’t have as much funding as it used to have, with about half of the lab manager’s salary coming from meat sales. However, Busboom said the aim is for Cougar Quality Meats sales to bolster the revenue brought in to the lab.

“We hope we can eventually be like Ferdinand’s and be bringing in that kind of income,” he said.

The Meats Lab, located on Wilson Road, is a large building with specialized rooms for the entire meat preparation process, from slaughter to packaging. Busboom said every Cougar Quality Meats product comes from WSU-owned livestock.

After the animals are slaughtered, they are either cut and processed into products like sausages or pepperoni, or they are aged in a cooler. Busboom said pork is never aged, but beef, lamb and goat benefit in increased tenderness from the dry-aging process.

“If you’re going for a premium product like we do with our Wagyu premium beef and our premium Angus beef, we age that at least 21 days because we’re really trying to optimize the tenderness,” Busboom said.

Busboom’s graduate student, Natasha Moffitt, has been coordinating a lot of the Cougar Quality Meats sales. She said the marketing process has been largely centered on dialogue with customers.

“I really enjoy working with the customers and getting to know what they like,” she said. “As I interact with them, I learn what we should be doing here because they tell me the types of things that they want.”

Moffitt said the lab is continuously coming up with new products to sell such as their new pork breakfast sausage and bratwursts.

Eventually, Moffitt said, she would like to work in extension and teach about livestock production and meat science. She said her work and education at the lab has been instrumental in her decision on where to point her future.

“I’m focusing my masters in meat science so it’s clearly steered me towards what I want to do with the rest of my life,” Moffitt said.

In addition to providing a facility for student education and Cougar Quality Meats production, Busboom said the Meats Lab gives producers in the industry a way to interact with each other, course instructors and students.