Working at Raider Red Meats seldom gets boring. Employees have to harvest animals, cut steaks, and produce the further-processed items like sausages and shelf-stable meat snacks.

With the addition of two new faculty hires and a new meat lab on the way, the Purdue College of Agriculture has made it clear that meat science is important and valued as Indiana’s land-grant university.

The pork industry’s decision to convert to sow housing in recent years had been driven predominantly ethical concerns, but scientific research may yet help producers transition more easily to group housing and handle the new set of challenges it brings.

The American Meat Science Association’s annual Reciprocal Meat Conference (RMC) has grown into the largest meeting of meat scientists in the United States.