Summit Meat Processing, located in Pulaski County, is a fairly new meat processor (>3 years in operation).  They are a USDA-FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) facility that is open to new possibilities and want to learn new meat processing techniques.  Twin Creek Farms is a beef farm that is diversifying their operation to include a local beef, direct marketing option.  The owners want to direct market beef from their cattle via the internet, an on-farm store, and local restaurants.  Twin Creek Farms wants to incorporate as many of the new beef cuts as possible.  These cuts include the Denver Cut, Chuck Eye Steak, Beef Country Style Ribs, etc, which will help them with summer steak sales as most of those cuts are traditionally from roasts.  The challenge is that the meat cutters at Summit Meat Processing are traditional meat cutters that were not familiar with the new beef cuts.  Summit contacted me to train them on the new beef cuts, therefore I spent a day with them teaching and training/working with their meat cutters on those new techniques.  In addition, Twin Creek Farms was present to oversee and approve the new cuts.  The training helped create an open dialog between Twin Creek Farms and Summit Meat Processing, that should help satisfy both parties and create more opportunities.  The major challenge for local, direct marketers is communication between the farm and the meat processor.  Hopefully this will change the paradigm and both Twin Creek Farms and Summit Meat Processor will be successful.