Arkansas Hunters and Arkansas State University Aid Deer Management and Fight Food Insecurity

JONESBORO — Arkansas State University joined Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry and Arkansas Farm Bureau on Wednesday to unveil the latest addition to its College of Agriculture Meat Market and Lab: a $750,000 improvement project designed to fight food insecurity with the help of deer hunters and processors statewide.

The expansion, funded through a grant from the Arkansas Office of Skills Development, focuses on producing shelf-stable venison snack sticks that AHFH uses to feed children from food-insecure families. The small packages of protein are much more than a convenient treat; in some cases, they are the only meat children receive on weekends when school meal programs are unavailable.

Ronnie Ritter, executive director of AHFH, said the organization distributes hundreds of thousands of servings of donated ground venison to food pantries across the state each year, and its new snack stick program has seen far greater demand than organizers originally anticipated. The snack sticks are placed into weekend backpack programs so students living in food-insecure homes have the nutrition they need on weekends and school holidays.

“I get a call nearly every week from a new school asking for these sticks to add to their backpack programs,” Ritter said. “They can get cereals and canned goods, but shelf-stable meat is an extremely hard need to fill.”

Ritter explained that while many processors produce snack sticks in Arkansas, he has struggled to find one capable of producing snack sticks that need no refrigeration at the volume the organization requires. Until ASU’s expansion, Ritter relied on a facility in Missouri for the bulk of the processing.

Last year, AHFH provided 172,000 snack sticks, with the meat for 128,000 sourced directly from deer clubs enrolled in the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP).

“We have the demand, we have a lot of hunters willing to donate deer, and we also have the biological need to harvest the deer and balance local deer herds,” Jeremy Brown, coordinator for the AGFC’s Deer Management Assistance Program, said. “Clubs that work with our biologists to manage their herds often need to harvest more does than their members want to process and keep. But to maintain a healthy, productive herd, they have to keep the buck-to-doe ratio close to a 1-to-1 balance.”

Over the past few years, Brown and Ritter have coordinated with multiple DMAP clubs to host special hunts aimed at meeting the demand for the snack stick program.

“We’re hoping to produce 200,000 this year, and we’re already ahead of last year’s deer club donations,” Ritter said. “Now, the real limiting factor is the cost and capacity to process the sticks, and this expansion at A-State will help keep as much of that processing within the state as possible.”

According to Corey Readnour, meat lab director at Arkansas State, the upgraded facility should be able to process nearly 200,000 shelf-stable snack sticks per year, provided there is sufficient storage capacity for the meat. Students working in the lab will process and package the venison, gaining hands-on vocational experience while providing a direct service to Arkansas communities. Liam McGregor, an A-State student working in the lab, said the initiative inspired him to take greater ownership of his education and work.

“Before I started my job here, Corey mentioned this program was getting started,” McGregor said. “Knowing how much it would help the community and give back was a big reason I wanted to take the job. I didn’t know all the specifics at first, but I knew it was a great cause, so I’m proud to be a part of it.”

Visit www.arkansashunters.org for more information about Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry. Hunters can make a donation to help pay processing fees for these snack sticks and other AHFH operations when they purchase their hunting license at www.agfc.com/licenses.

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CUTLINES:

PROCESSOR
Corey Readnour, meat lab director at Arkansas State, producing the first of thousands of snack sticks that recent upgrades to ASU’s meat lab will make possible. Photo by Carla Wehmeyer, Arkansas State University photographer.

SPEAKER
Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry Executive Director Ronnie Ritter thanked Arkansas State and Arkansas Farm Bureau for their commitment to helping solve food insecurity at Wednesday’s ceremony. AGFC photo.

DEER
Many deer clubs in the AGFC’s Deer Management Assistance Program need to harvest does to balance their herds, and many are eager to donate these deer to Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry’s snack stick program for children. AGFC photo.

BACKPACK
Shelf-stable snack sticks are sent home with children in food-insecure households to ensure they have protein when school-based meal programs are not available. AGFC photo.