Getting the Meat Science and Animal Biologic Discovery building built here at the UW-Madison campus started merely as a dream with no end goal in sight. Getting enough funding, sponsors, donors, permits, etc., along with figuring out exactly what this building would provide on campus, seemed so out of reach and overwhelming that it took nearly ten years to even get something put on paper. But with the right people pushing the idea forward and figuring out a new way to elevate the study of meat sciences at UW-Madison, a state-of-the-art lab and meat processing building was created.

Though, getting a new building to house the meat science and animal biologics department wasn’t a recent realization. A new building had been in discussion for over twenty years before actual planning and construction of the new Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery building started. People involved in the meat science and animal biologics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison knew for a while that they needed an updated place. Dan Schafer, an emeritus professor of animal nutrition at UW-Madison, was heavily involved in the conception and planning of a new MSABD building, along with being the first director of the program. In an interview, Dan talks about the long and intensive work that went into not only the planning of a new animal science building on campus, but what the motive and impact this building would have on students, staff, and the general state of Wisconsin. He touches on the fact that Wisconsin is a major meat and dairy production state, and having a state-of-the-art meat processing factory and lab equipment to further influence Wisconsin’s impact to the nation was needed.

The first step in getting this project on the road was figuring out what new concepts and motives this building would provide. Dan, along with a committee of people with a rich history in everything related to meat science and processing, put together what their overall mission with this building was going to be. In general, this building was going to house anything that involved meat, from harvesting to retail products. But in more specific terms, it was going to have two different aspects to it: the microbiology and food safety aspect of meat, and the biosafety level. This addition to the MSABD building allowed for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study not only organizations of the present, to anticipate pathogenic microbes in future meat products. This was a groundbreaking revelation to the new scientific discoveries this building and UW-Madison as a whole can contribute, and thus the biosafety level 2 became something that this new building had to incorporate.

The second step in getting the building to construction was finding donors and getting sponsors that would get the building built. Starting with absolutely nothing but a dream in the beginning of this process, Dan talks about the starting point of getting people to even take them seriously and coming up with ways to get this idea to be more than just a far-fetched dream. Way back in the day, around the late 1980’s, a ground rule was proposed saying that if the university comes up with half of the capital expense to fund a campus building, the state will donate the other half, which was very promising on their end.

In order to accurately pitch to donors and convince them to donate to this new building, they had to give them a cost estimate for what a new building would cost. To do that, they had to meet with an architect and give them their general idea of what they want this building to include, what they wanted it to look like, and the general initial needs that this building was going to have. Dan, along with various other people, came up with a cost estimate which was originally $26 million, only for it to grew to $42 million by the time construction was supposed to start happening. Dan had to go out on behalf of the university to talk to people who might help out and traveled all over Wisconsin and even to Minnesota to find potential donators. Overall, a lot of people put a lot of time and effort in talking to numerous meat production and local Wisconsin companies to find funding for this building, that would eventually impact the meat processing industry with their new scientist discoveries and findings.

But before construction on the building could began, Dan and the advisory team realized that they would need to come up with a name for it. Embracing the new mission of this building and the future he wants to see in it, they came up with the current name: Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery. The “meat science” aspect of the name showed the general focus of the building being all about the production and conservation of meat, and “animal biologics” came from the ability and focus on getting biologics from plant and from animal material. The “discovery” part of the name came from its meaning of being a generation of new knowledge. They picked discovery, versus innovation, because innovation was the novel application of existing knowledge, whereas the research done in this building was creating new knowledge.

With all of the details figured out, a construction date was set. Officially starting in 2018, the Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery building was underway, and with it a new wave of animal science and meat safety was born. While it wasn’t the easiest process to get to the construction step, and there were a few setbacks that got in the way, it proves to be well worth it in the new discoveries and innovations that come from it.

This Program Feature was written by Myrissa Zoff, a summer 2024 intern at MSABD.

This article was posted in Program Features.