When you are dedicated to assisting smaller poultry and meat processors, walking the trade floor at the International Production and Processing Exposition (IPPE) in Atlanta this week was a bit of a scavenger hunt.
IPPE each year brings together large companies to offer their wares and services, primarily to the large poultry integrators and processors. Smaller start-up processors attending the show can be easily overwhelmed and intimidated as they walk through the three massive halls filled with extravagant booths, many costing more than an average single-family house.
For nearly two years, the Meat and Poultry Technical Assistance program has responded to more than 1,100 requests to help people and businesses working to create a more resilient, diverse, and equitable meat and poultry processing system. Developing a viable processing and marketing enterprise for any animal protein is challenging. That challenge multiplies tenfold in the poultry sector.
More than half a century ago, poultry production and processing began to devolve into two polar opposite models. At one pole are producers raising birds in backyards or on small plots to sell to families and friends or at local farmers’ markets. At the other extreme, large growers are locked into production contracts for the large processors.
Everything between largely evaporated. Across the country, though, a hardy group of poultry pioneers are working to bring back “poultry in the middle." Some producers are designing facilities to process 300 – 1,500 birds per hour. That may sound like a lot, but it pales compared to the large processors that typically handle more than 10,000 birds per hour.
Manufacturers and suppliers at IPPE overwhelmingly cater to those large grower-processor operations.
But tucked between the massive display pavilions and nearly hidden along the back walls at IPPE, a small group of vendors offered equipment and services needed by these poultry pioneers. Those nuggets, alone make a visit to IPPE worthwhile for start-up and expanding smaller scale poultry processors.
I spent two days at IPPE to search out some of those vendors and meet with some smaller processors to explore the Expo’s trade floor and seminars.
It was indeed a scavenger hunt. Najeeb Muhaimin of Pride Road Poultry in Georga was also on hand to look for suppliers to provide equipment for his on-farm halal processing enterprise. He served as a scout, alerting me when he discovered a vendor that could meet the needs of processors of his size.
Tuskegee University was there, too, with a booth promoting the Meat and Poultry Technical Assistance services available to smaller processors. The American Meat Science Association promoted the MPPTA program during a meeting with stakeholders at IPPE.
I left IPPE Wednesday afternoon with a thick stack of business cards, a file folder stuffed with flyers, and several pages of notes with new contacts and resources to strengthen our work in supporting the processors working to bring back poultry in the middle.
Sometimes, scavenger hunts can be a lot of fun.