Back in 1939, a group of equipment and ingredient suppliers and forward-thinking frozen-food locker operators decided to work together, and the National Institute of Locker & Freezer Provisioners was created with the idea of hosting a united trade show. In 1974 that organization rode with industry changes and operated under the name American Association of Meat Processors (AAMP). The show was one thing. Survival of the family-operated meat processing shops was another.

The non-profit trade association is headquartered in Elizabethtown, Pa., and is still flourishing by following its founding philosophy of seeing and pursuing food industry trends and keeping its membership schooled on how to meet those coming consumption trends and the changes they may dictate.

AAMP has grown to 1,740 industry members to become the largest group of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. It also interfaces with 30 other affiliated state and regional trade associations.

Chris Young, executive director for the organization, said the recent growth of AAMP has been due in part to three factors:

“When I first came to AAMP it was during the rise of the local food/farm-to-table movement, which was the result of many people wanting to know where their food came from and many decided to buy local,” he said. “This brought steady growth to the small processor for a number of years.

“Then we experienced the COVID epidemic. As families adjusted to being home, there was a rush on grocery stores for meat and poultry and when the supplies ran out consumers started looking for other places to buy them. They discovered our small processors with retail stores and found they not only had what they were looking for, but also a variety of other products. Many of those consumers have become regular customers.”

“This was followed by fewer facilities that were available to harvest the locally produced animals, and it triggered new local plant building and expansion to answer that demand,” Young continued. “And it resulted in government grants to encourage and speed up that much needed local harvesting growth.”

AAMP remains dedicated to keeping its membership up to date on changing consumption trends, business management and training. (Source: AAMP)

The big show

AAMP operates an annual convention and the 2024 event featured its largest ever exhibit of equipment, services and supplies with 336 booths. For this summer’s AAMP convention in Kansas City, Mo., all 360 available booths are sold out.

Throw in a few days of hands-on instructional workshops on how to improve products, business management, promotion, communication, hiring and training employees, the nation’s largest meat competition — the American Cured Meat Championships — and it becomes obvious that this is a can’t-miss event for smaller business operators.

“The AAMP convention is a family reunion. It’s a place where everyone feels they can talk openly; they can learn from each other and find other processors they can communicate with or bounce ideas back and forth all year long,” Young said.

It’s not just the growing convention that helps expand the association’s base; it’s also the staff and their outreach to the members.

Team players

Young came from an extensive background in the meat industry. He was the operating manager for Wild Bill’s Jerky in Lancaster County, Pa., not far from the AAMP office. Not only did he see the facility expand from a former 5,000-square-foot Amish slaughterhouse, but he helped oversee the expansion for the jerky processing area by an additional 12,000 square feet during his 18 years with that company.

He also spent another three years at a ham, sausage and pork processing plant in nearby Reading, Pa.

He came to work at AAMP in 2013 when the association had a little over 1,200 members. He served as an outreach specialist to assist member plants with everything from production, quality control and HACCP issues. He took over as the association’s executive director in the fall of 2015.

While most national trade organizations strive to have their headquarters in Washington, DC, AAMP has retained its grassroots location, and still has never given a nickel to any politician. It remains a listened-to trade group in the venue of “the big boys.”

Young has also brought on board a staff of especially talented workers, including a convention manager, Niki Cloud, who has a meat background and has served as the executive secretary for the Missouri Association of Meat Processors for over a decade. There are also outreach specialists Nelson Gaydos who lives in Somerset, about 100 miles west of the AAMP office, and Abbey Davidson, a former state meat inspector in Wyoming, who specializes in HACCP and inspection issues. All three of these staffers live outside the immediate office area or out of state but are available to travel or communicate quickly when a member needs help.

Sam Gazdziak, an industry journalist and now an AAMP staffer, handles the newsletters and communications with members. Early this year he helped transform the AAMP website to make it accessible by cell phone and become mobile friendly. The site, www.aamp.com, allows for convention registration, access to AAMP webinars, a member directory, special discounts, articles that can be downloaded and printed by the members or ordered in bulk and, later this year, HACCP templates. The site also offers members information about access to used equipment for sale, job openings and internship programs.

AAMP also offers a service to help members get their product nutrition labels processed. Oliver Irwin does this service. Becky Kurtz handles the finances, and Bethany Young helps with member registrations. Many of the seven AAMP staffers have master’s degrees.

One reason the association has been able to continuously offer members such a far-ranging lineup of assistance from the staff goes back to its location. For decades it had leased office space for its own operations in Elizabethtown but in the mid-1970’s bought the office and by the mid-1980’s purchased a 6-acre tract on which to erect its own new office.

AAMP was successful in leasing out its 7,600-square-foot-basement area to a cable company, Comcast. With the available ground to the rear of the lot, they found a company that wanted to build a 10,000-square-foot office-warehouse-servicing facility for food grade compressors, pumps, and related production equipment. A few years later the firm (Cummins-Wagner) sought a second similar size structure which was erected by AAMP and leased out as well. All the buildings are paid off, freeing up funds to help cover staffing, maintenance, travel and other service costs for the association.

Members matter

Monitoring trends and paying attention to changing member needs and potential problems has enabled the American Association of Meat Processors to stay at the top of its game.

“We get great feedback about problems, needs and possible solutions from our volunteer officers and board of director members,” Young said. “We also want to continue partnering with other industry and university entities like the American Meat Science Association, Flower Hill Institute and many other industry consultants as well as our state and regional association affiliates.

“There are issues still unresolved such as EPA effluent proposals, Listeria and Salmonella final rules ... even chronic wasting disease, bird flu concerns and more. That means we have to be constantly on the lookout for what members want to see, but also what they don’t want to see because no one was watching out for them.

“There are still other areas such as small family business needs, communications, mental health in a stressful environment, new technical assistance needs and even how to better promote AAMP,” Young added. “We may be at a 97.4% membership renewal by the end of January, but we continue to listen and anticipate the needs of the little guy in the meat industry. And boy do we listen!”