Gianforte gets a look at Superior Meats new technology
Susan Gianforte accompanied her husband, Governor Greg Gianforte, on a portion of his 56 County Tour last week as they stopped at Superior Meats. Gianforte talks with owner, Jerry Stroot, on his recent ARPA grant and then had a tour of the processing plant.
When Jerry Stroot started Superior Meats in 1996, he estimates that he butchered 50-60 cattle in a mobile unit that year. Today he does that many every week at his processing plant.
“We’re doing a lot of local ranchers and we’re booked out into next year already,” he shared.
About a dozen ranches between Helmville, Drummond, Frenchtown and Ovando have contracts with Superior Meats where they sell their processed meat directly to their own distributers. Stroot works with these outfits plus he picks up a load of hogs each week in Whitehall for his own label that are served in many restaurants and sold in grocery and convenience stores throughout Missoula, Lolo and Clinton.
On May 11, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte made a stop on his "56 County Tour" to visit with Jerry and Sandy Stroot, along with taking a tour of the business. Superior Meats was recently awarded a $150,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant for an automated packaging equipment and composting system and Gianforte wanted to hear more about this equipment.
The state-of-the-art composter will take all the scraps and turn it into compost. And Stroot means all the scraps. Hide, bones, paunch, blood, etc. But also, manure, hay, paper, cardboard and anything that is organic. Anything that isn’t shrink wrapped will be placed in the system and will handle 2,000 pounds and turn it into 1,000 pounds of compost that he’ll sell.
In about 24 hours, it will produce a nutrient-rich soil amendment. He hopes to have this up and running before the Mineral County Fair.
Rep. Denley Loge, a rancher in St. Regis, added accolades to Jerry and Sandy Stroot by informing the governor that Superior Meats processes all the animals from all the 4-H fairs in the area.
“Yeah, August is a bit hectic, Stroot acknowledged.
Discussion included the Cooperative Interstate Shipment (CIS) Program.
“We were the 10th state in the country to enter into a cooperative to enter into an agreement with the USDA,” Gianforte said. “State inspected meat processors cannot ship outside the state of Montana. Under this new agreement that we just got in place, if a processor decides to go through this CIS certification, they can stay state inspected but ship to all 50 states”
This has all been formalized in the last 60 days, he said.
Superior Meats is already state inspected and looking into this CIS certification. Their jerky is sold throughoutBig Sky Country and Stroot ships buffalo jerky out of state.
“We ship a lot,” he said. “And I’ve got suppliers that want beef, and I can’t do it but with this new program, I can,” said Stroot.
Gianforte shared other meat processing success stories emphasizing the growth of the industry. One example was a processor in Billings whose initial capacity was 5,000 head a year, but Phase II is 25,000 per year due in part to this new program for Montana.
“At the Department of Agriculture, we’ve really made it a priority to help the (meat) processors build capacity so we can break the monopoly in the Midwest. And we just announced recently, that in Montana, in the last year, we’ve doubled the processing capacity,” Gianforte said.
When it comes to processing wild game this hunting season, there’s a new plan on the board for Superior Meats.
“We’re going to try and fit some in. We’ve got too many people that were upset with us,” Stroot admitted, because even with the huge facility expansion 18 months ago they had to turn away many loyal customers in 2021.
“We’ll still do the sausages and meat sticks no matter what this season,” he added.
With 24 employees, and looking for more, Superior Meats is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday 8 a.m. until noon, with their retail area adding more products weekly.