Project will include a renovation and expansion to our current carcass aging cooler to be able to increase our harvesting and processing of beef cattle, hogs, lambs and goats

Eastman Locker received a $200,000 project grant award from the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service under the Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grants – Supplemental Funding program (CFDA 10.180). The funding will support renovations and expansions to the awardee's existing carcass aging cooler and the addition of a new carcass/aging cooler to increase harvesting and processing capacity for beef, hogs, lambs and goats. This will improve the awardee's processing efficiency and turnaround times. Located in Eastman, WI, Eastman Locker is a small, family-owned business and the largest employer in its town. The project aims to provide more local employment opportunities and strengthen relationships with local farmers and wholesale/retail customers in surrounding Wisconsin and neighboring state communities through increased production capabilities.

Our project will also include an addition of a new carcass/aging cooler to be able to accommodate beef halves and increase our harvesting capacity. With this project we look to improve our processing efficiency and improve our processing turnaround time. We are a small family-owned business and the largest employer of 10 employees in our small town of eastman, WI which has tripled in the last 2 years. With this project we plan to provide more employment opportunities to the community. We are one of two state inspected meat processing plants in crawford county WI. We believe in locally sourcing our meat and work with many local farmers in our surrounding communities. With this project we plan to grow our relationships with our current local farmers as well as form new relationships with additional local farmers. We currently supply locally raised and processed meat to several restaurants/taverns and convenience stores in our surrounding communities as well as consumers from our retail store. With this project we look to grow our relationships with our current wholesale accounts and retail customers in our wisconsin communities. We also plan to add new wholesale accounts and serve other surrounding communities which would include communities in iowa, minnesota and illinois with CIS as all three states are within a 50-mile radius.