Cooperative Interstate Shipping is Beefing Up the Bottom Line
In partnership with: Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Wisconsin has a long tradition of producing some of the finest meat products in the country.
The Cooperative Interstate Meat and Poultry Shipment Program (CIS) allows state-inspected meat and poultry processing plants to ship approved products over state lines. Before the program, the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Poultry Products Inspection Act outlawed interstate sale of meats processed at state-inspected plants. This policy kept businesses from selling their products to customers just across the border. Wisconsin is one of only four states participating in the program, and the implementation has already proven a boon to companies such as Wyttenbach Meats in Prairie du Sac.
Fritz and Ginny Wyttenbach have been involved in farming and raising Angus beef more than 50 years, and have owned and operated their meat market for 13 years.
“We are one of only a handful of producers who market directly from the farm,” says Ginny Wyttenbach. “We supply the beef, and Fritz’ brother supplies hogs from his family farm, thus our slogan ‘Fresh from the family farm to your family table.’ ”
Wyttenbach was the state’s first meat processing company to qualify for the program – a process she says required more than two years of planning and paperwork.
“We had to have new labeling and packaging, and we have to make sure these products [for interstate sale] are kept separate,” Wyttenbach says. “Marketing through a wholesaler was also a very involved process. We needed to do things such as buy a universal barcode and figure out what boxes we needed for our case size, and we had to label the boxes as well as the products. DATCP helped us through the process.”
But even with all the requirements, Wyttenbach says the ability to market across state lines has benefited the business and increased sales.
“Of the initial three products we were approved to sell, what has really taken off is our trademarked Strawsage – a beef stick with a hole in it for your bloody mary,” she says.