Increasing Food System Resiliency Through Mobile Meat Processing: Atlas Meats
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Date
2021-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Over the past five years, we have seen many Ohio State Design students tackle the food system to various degrees. These works have laid the foundation for a deeper dive into the food system. The realities of food insecurity, wasteful consumption, and unsustainable industrial farming practices are symptoms of a deeper problem: lack of resiliency and redundancy within the food system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, parts of the United States experienced meat shortages due to outbreaks among workers within meatpacking plants. The concentration and consolidation of the meatpacking industry into large corporations caused this system to fail quickly. It was not able to gracefully extend and adapt resulting in the euthanization of thousands of animals. Introducing on- or near-farm mobile processing would allow smallholder farmers to process their own livestock, providing resiliency within the system. Mobile processing, while available in parts of the U.S., is largely disorganized and detached from the larger meat supply chain. There is a lack of standardization in regulation, business strategy, and construction among mobile processing units (MPU) across the United States. Atlas Meats' mobile processing unit and rental service promote empowerment of smallholder farmers, humane treatment of animals, education of meat consumers, and sustainable practices. This is accomplished through a standardized unit centered around the user's contextual needs for safe, clean processing and a rental service that encourages upward mobility through comprehensive training and adaptable scalability. The concept could be expanded to meet aquaculture and game processing needs to further diversify the U.S. local food system.
Description
KXpress Scholarship: The Knowledge Exchange created KXpress to harness the creative energy of students at The Ohio State University. Students were invited to submit creative science communications projects related to one of the five priority areas, called grand challenges, for the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences: water quality, the urban-rural interface, farm and community stress, food waste, and food security. The 2021 winners were awarded scholarships of up to $500 and mentoring from the KX staff to further develop their ideas.
Keywords
Food System, Resiliency, Mobile Meat Processing