Garbage bins full of raw meat and bones sit in a corner and cattle carcasses hang from the ceiling waiting to be cut up and packaged. Blood splatters onto the floor while a knife hits the table.

It is just another day at work for Alexandra Gress.

Gress, a junior in animal sciences, works par-time at the Ohio State Meat Laboratory, located in the Animal Sciences building.

Her daily tasks include cleaning animal carcasses and slicing and packing meat.

“Pretty much all this week we’re cutting beef,” Gress said. “We are just taking the whole carcasses and breaking them down into their retail cuts … and at the end of the day we will package it up and put it in the freezer.”

The lab handles beef pork and lamb through all stages of the slaughtering process.

The lab currently employs 12 undergraduate students, said David O’Diam, meat lab manager and animal sciences graduate student.

He said part-time students provide about 90 percent of the labor required to run the lab.

This labor includes slaughtering the animals, slicing the meat and oftentimes cooking or packaging the meat to be sold.

“The main purpose of the meat lab is education through research,” O’Diam said.

Henry Zerby, faculty coordinator for the lab, said the graduate students in the lab do three main types of research.

“Most of our work is either trying to nutritionally or genetically influence the raw product quality to enhance customer satisfaction,” Zerby said. “Or, it is targeted towards product development … or food safety.”

Many research projects are designed to find the type of product that is most acceptable to the consumer by evaluating the color, flavor and tenderness of the meat, he said. The finished product is served to numerous consumers to see which flavor profile they prefer.

Although most of the meat that comes through the lab is used for research purposes, the leftover product is sold.

The meat lab sells products including bacon and sirloin steaks. All products can be ordered from the meat science Web site, ag.ohio-state.edu/~meatsci, and must be picked up on Friday mornings from the lab.

The profits from the meat sales are used to offset research costs, O’Diam said.

Gress, who originally came to OSU to pursue veterinary medicine, said she started working at the meat lab in the summer and plans to continue until she graduates.

“I feel like I’ve learned so much (working here) because I don’t come from a farm background, so I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said.

Gress hopes to pursue a job in food safety or inspection after graduation.

Although she enjoys most aspects of her job, she said her least favorite part is cleaning up at the end of the day.

“There are sanitation forms, and we have to clean everything according to USDA guidelines,” she said. “Then, when everything has been cleaned up, you go through (checklists) and make sure that everything has been done properly.”

She said the most rewarding part of her job is learning how food gets from the farm to the dinner plate, which is something many people never even think about.

“I feel like I can appreciate what I eat a lot more,” she said.

Although Gress enjoys her job, she said not everyone understands her interest in meat sciences, including her parents.

“I’m from Ashtabula, and we definitely don’t live on a farm,” she said. “So my parents think I’m crazy.”

Lindsay Betz can be reached at [email protected].