Competing on Fresno State’s meat judging team isn’t always a picnic, but the team does provide a feast of opportunities for students.

“If you are going to be in the meat industry, you want this on your resume,” graduate student and meat team coach Crystal Waters said. “Opportunities for our really small program are endless.”

Not only is Fresno State’s meat judging team small, it is the only four-year university team to compete on the West Coast.

“The closest team to us is in Colorado,” Waters said. “We are so small, no one has heard of us, but we’ve actually done very well.”

The team itself is broken down into a senior team and a junior team. The five current members of the senior team compete in three fall competitions while the junior team learns the basics of judging carcasses and cuts of meat. The junior team then must try out to compete in the three spring contests.

“You have to try, you have to be good and you have to be competitive,” Waters said. There is only room for six people to go to each competition, and so far there are eight junior members working for a spot. The team travels to places such as Colorado, Texas and Nebraska for competitions against 20 other universities, on average.

“It takes a lot of logic,” Waters said. “You have to be very fast and quick thinking.”

Judging is also very methodical and takes a lot of memorization, Waters added.

The students learn to evaluate both carcasses and wholesale cuts of beef, pork and lamb. At a competition the students don’t know what type of animal, cut or carcass they will be evaluating until the competition starts. They will be presented with either four cuts or four carcasses of one of the three animals. They then have to rank the products from best to worst. After that they present structured written reasons as to why they ranked the products the way they did. This all has to be done within a time limit.

“It is a ton of stuff they have to prepare for the first semester before they start traveling,” Waters said about the junior members.

“I think it’s fun,” animal science major Jenny Krage said. “It’s a good learning experience, you get a lot of industry connections.”

To help prepare for the competitions, the team evaluates animals not only from Fresno State’s livestock but from local plants such as Harris Ranch, Cargill, Superior Lamb and Yosemite Meats as well.

“We have the opportunity to judge and evaluate all the species within four hours of Fresno,” animal science professor John Henson, the team advisor said.

The team also goes on industry tours where it gets to see the large meat processing plants such as Tyson Fresh Meats Inc.

“The industry tours are great,” Henson said, “They’ve seen things on industry tours I would say students across the country haven’t, like high-pressure processing and product irradiation; opportunities that you can’t get anywhere else.”

On one tour, the team went to 14 meat plants in three days.

“They met all of the powers to be at those companies and made contacts they’ll use later when they’re ready to be employed,” Henson said.

The team doesn’t necessarily consist of only agriculture majors, however.

“It is open to anyone in the university who has an interest in critical thinking, oral communication, written communication and networking for future employment,” Henson said.

The team’s students have to prepare for competitions, travel for days at a time to get to tours and competitions, get their school work done and sometimes have jobs to account for.

“It really does take a special breed of person to handle the pressure. It takes a lot of balance,” Waters said.

The rewards of the experience can be great, though.

“I was a student at Fresno State and probably one of the most significant experiences I had was being on a judging team. The opportunity to travel across the country, see what’s going on at other universities, visit industry folks and their facilities and compete at a very high level with like universities across the country; it’s a great opportunity,” Henson said.