Day 3 in Seymour!

Well, it is yet another day in Australia. I do have to say it has been the best/ most educational day yet. This morning we went to the meat packing plant called JBS. This plant was amazing. They slaughtered both sheep and beef at this facility. They can process 5,000 sheep and 1200 beef a day! You can only imagine how quickly and how many employees it would take to run a business that can produce that much in a day. They have 600 employees currently working at the Australian JBS. It was much like an assembly line. Each person had a job that they had to do and they were extremely skilled at it. It was pretty funny how the workers reacted when they had visitors. They were excited to see us! One of the workers started talking to me and asking where I was from. I told him America. He said , “Oh America, is your name Dorothy?” haha! They also had packaging machines that were just amazingly quick. It was so cool to see how that machine knew which size of bag to use to package the meat. Something that was a lot different was the marbling in the meat. There virtually is none. They told us that the value added meat is getting really big in Australia. For those of you who don’t know what value added meat is a hormone free meat. I wish I could say more about the differences between the US and the Australian slaughtering differences, but we want to keep JBS privacy as much as possible. JBS does not normally give group tours at all. I asked the tour guide how many he did usually and he said none, so we were VERY honored to be there and would never want to cause any harm to their name.

After we were done touring JBS, we got on the bus and went to lunch at a pub. It was the best meal we have had yet. We had a choice from pork, chicken, or fish. I got the pork and it was really really good. Everyone said that their food was good at this place, so that was nice to have a good meal and get full off of it.

After lunch was done we loaded back up on the bus and headed for Webb Simmental ranch. These people were hilarious and awesome hosts. They had snacks there waiting for us and beverages ready in the fridge. They went above and beyond on hospitality and loved us Americans being there. They talked to us about how small the Simmental breed is in Australia. They are one of the very few who have picked up on the breed. A major difference that we see so far is that Australians hate black cattle. They would rather have red. That was quite the shock for me to hear. They would like the Simmental breed to grow into something special as it had in America. Webb ranch wants to have its name as the starter of the breed in Australia. His quote that I absolutely loved was “Be Bold, Be Daring, Be Different”. It was a great experience to see this farm.

We stay the night in Seymore today. This hotel is very interesting, but we only stay one night here.  There is more to come tomorrow! Hope you all are having a “Good day mate!”

Katelyn