ELIZABETHTOWN, PA. — The American Association of Meat Processors (AAMP) announced a new partnership with Range Meat Academy, which will offer AAMP members a 10% discount when enrolling employees into the program’s online training courses.

Range Meat Academy provides courses both newcomers to the meat industry and existing employees looking for additional training to gain extensive knowledge about cutting, merchandising and selling meat.

The online program was founded by Kari Underly, a third-generation butcher and author of the James Beard-nominated book, The Art of Beef Cutting: A Meat Professional's Guide to Butchering and Merchandising.

Range Meat Academy's curriculum is used in junior colleges, workforce development programs, meat distributors, grocery stores and meat processors. The courses, which cover beef, pork, poultry and lamb, come in two types of curriculums: the clerk and the cutter.

“The clerk is used typically for somebody who's just starting in the industry, and the skills that you would gain through that curriculum is almost an equivalent to being a supermarket butcher,” Underly said. “You need to know what the sub-primals are, what the cuts are, substitutable cuts, and just really learning about the meat in general.

“The meat cutter curriculum picks up on the basics of the meat clerk curriculum, but there we start with the whole animal. For beef, we start with two quarters of beef, and we break it down: primals, sub-primals, individual muscles and all the way to the cuts. Within that, we teach them how to cut and process the typical cuts, and then we also teach them how to do some of the value-added cuts.”

More than 10 hours of instructional videos are available to teach how to break down the animal into individual cuts.

Program add-ons help enhance the overall curriculum. They include the following:

• Manager Experience allows a supervisor to track employee process as they progress through the coursework. 
• Observation Checklists allow the employer to test the students in real-world tasks, such as setting up their workstation properly, performing a cutting test or demonstrating knife skills. 
• Branded Learning Portals enhance a company's training initiatives, reinforce the brand identity and instills a sense of pride and ownership among employees. 
• Leaderboards can instill friendly competition, motivation and recognition.

To learn more about the program, AAMP members can visit www.aamp.com/discounts and obtain the discount code.