The Florida Cattlewomen’s Association, in collaboration with the Florida Beef Council, recently held an educational primal breakdown workshop that gave attendees a unique, hands-on experience in beef processing and education. The event was aimed at increasing knowledge about beef cuts, meat quality, and maximizing value for producers and consumers alike.
We spoke with Emily Beaty of Beaty Ranch LLC, one of the workshop participants, who shared her experience and insights.
“It was an awesome hands-on experience,” Beaty said. “There were well over 80 attendees, Dan Maples and Kylie Phillips always are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to all things beef. We got to listen to their presentation on different beef facts, nutritional info.”
The event featured both educational presentations and live demonstrations, allowing participants to connect theory with practice. For many, the highlight was the opportunity to physically work with beef cuts.
“Then my favorite part was getting out slabs of meat and getting to do hands-on experience on learning how to cut those, how to identify the different muscle group, and then really how to maximize your profit by learning how to make those big cuts into smaller cuts, make it stretch longer,” she added.
Beatty emphasized how rare it is to gain this level of access to the butchering process, especially with expert guidance.
“Truly the hands-on experience. It’s not every day that you get a large muscle from a cow and have the opportunity with an expert to be able to break down that piece of meat and really kind of see what goes into it,” she said. “You know, sometimes you are able to purchase a quarter or a half, but then you just receive it in packages and it’s done.”
She concluded, “You don’t really know the whole process of what went into it. So it was neat to have kind of like that hands-on butcher experience.”
Workshops like this demonstrate the Florida Cattlewomen’s ongoing commitment to beef education, consumer engagement, and agricultural awareness—important elements in supporting the Florida cattle industry and future generations of ranchers.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet. Florida Cattle Producer Takeaways From Beef Smarts and Healthy Starts Workshop