The recipients of this year’s Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame award are Robert G. Kauffman, Harvey R. Rasmussen, and Reginal, Norman, Lee and David Weber. The award winners will be inducted into the Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame at a luncheon Thursday, May 6 at the Sheraton Madison Hotel. The event is hosted by the Wisconsin Livestock and Meat Council. The recognition luncheon begins at noon. It is preceded by the annual meeting of the Meat Council at 10:30 a.m.

The Wisconsin Meat Industry Hall of Fame was created in 1993 to recognize individuals throughout the state who have contributed to the meat industry in Wisconsin. Past inductees include such well-known names as the Cudahys, Oscar Mayer, Frederick Usinger, and Fritz and Armelia Bernegger, founders of Hillshire Farms.

Robert G. Kauffman
During Bob Kauffman”s 30-year tenure as the Atwood Professor of Animal Science at the UW-Madison, he influenced the career paths of many students and instituted several innovative pedagogical methods of testing and coordinating learning for students. He also contributed to the pork industry by helping define a fourth lean quality type and patenting a method of improving color, water-holding capacity and tenderness in pork, beef, poultry and lamb muscles.

Kauffman is a native of Princeton, Mo. where he currently manages the family farm.

Kauffman served in the United States Air Force, and then began his academic career in animal science, first at the University of Illinois and then at the UW-Madison. He was a visiting scientist at the Research Institute of Animal Production, Zeist, the Netherlands in 1985. In 1996, after 30 years of teaching and conducting research, Kauffman retired from the animal sciences department at the UW-Madison. He currently holds the status of Emeritus Professor in that department.

During his 35-year academic career, Kauffman had a profound effect on his students, on the meat science faculty at the UW-Madison, and on businesspeople in the state, national and international meat industry.

Kauffman was an innovative teacher and an effective coordinator of learning. He developed the “Meat-Animal Evaluation Approach” of evaluating livestock, providing a competitive program for animal science students at the community-college and university level. This approach focused on the evaluation of market animals, breeding animals and carcasses in an organized and collective pedagogical environment. His “Livestock and Meat Marketing” course required students to work in teams, addressing major industry problems, some of which were financially supported by individual meat companies.

In addition, Kauffman initiated the “Academic Quadrathlon,” a four-part competition testing the knowledge and skills of teams of animal, dairy and poultry science students. Teams compete in written exams, public presentations, lab practical exercises and quiz bowls. The program was so popular it spread from the UW-Madison campus to ag colleges across the country.

During his tenure at the UW-Madison, Kauffman conducted extensive research on meat animal composition and quality. During sabbatical studies in The Netherlands, he discovered a fourth definable lean quality type in pork-red, soft and exudative (RSE) lean. He was the leader of a research team at the university that patented a new use of sodium bicarbonate to improve color, tenderness and water-holding capacity in pre- and post-rigor muscles.

Kauffman is married to Phyllis Ann Smith. They have two daughters, Rebecca (married to Richard Henly) and Ellen, and two grandsons, Alexander and Ian Campbell.

Harvey R. Rasmussen
Harvey Rasmussen, along with his son Bud, took over a successful Chicago business repairing equipment, including smoke houses, and developed it into the leading manufacturer of smoke houses.

Rasmussen was born in 1906 in Forest Park, Ill., one of five children of European immigrants Hans and Bertha Rasmussen. During World War II, he used his training as a sheet metal craftsman, working as a construction supervisor at the Chrysler Automotive Plant in Chicago, building engines for B-29 Air Force bombers.

After the war, Rasmussen worked for the Julian Engineering Company, building smoke houses for the meat industry. There he met Leo Spiehs, with whom he went into the smoke house business.

In the 1950s, Rasmussen and his son Bud became partners with the Cannatero brothers in West Chicago, Ill., who owned Alkar Engineering, a business that repaired equipment, including smoke houses. After Al Cannatero died in 1960, the Rasmussen family bought the business, which was growing by 35 percent annually.

Searching for a new site to expand the business, Bud Rasmussen eyed a for sale sign on a building in Lodi, Wis., near his vacation home on Lake Wisconsin. The family purchased the building in 1962 and renamed the company Alkar-Rasmussen.

Since that time, Alkar-Rasmussen has become the world leader in manufacturing smoke houses. The Lodi-based company has provided permanent employment for more than 280 people and is the only all-season major business in Lodi. It provides a large tax base for local and state governments.

Today the company is called Alkar-Rapid Pak Sanimatic. It has an expanded product line of batch ovens, continuous smoking/cooking systems, brine chillers, drying chambers, automatic cleaning systems and packaging equipment. The most recent patented innovation is a flash pasteurization system incorporated into packaging equipment, ensuring the elimination of Listeria monocytogenes from ready-to-eat products such as hot dogs and deli meats.

Rasmussen”s concern for the environment is evidenced in his dedication to building smoke house equipment that minimizes the production of volatile smoke compounds that can escape into the atmosphere.

The company has supported meat science education programs at many land-grant universities, including providing a modern smoke house for the UW-Madison Meat Science Laboratory.

Rasmussen served as an officer of the Meat Industry and Manufacturing Association and was an active member of the American Meat Industry and the National Independent Meat Processors Association.

Rasmussen was married to Myrtle O”Kane and they had three children, Lorraine, Delores and Bud. Rasmussen served as the company”s president until his death in 1975 at the age of 69.

Reginal, Norman, Lee and David Weber
The Weber brothers-Reg, Norm, Lee and David-developed the Weber Meats processing facility in Cuba City into one of the outstanding smaller scale meat processing facilities in Wisconsin.

The Weber brothers purchased the meat processing plant in 1962, after the death of their father Otto, who had run the business since 1947. At the time, the sons ranged in age from 17 to 23. Their mother was active in the business until her death in 1999. Today, the Weber brothers and several of their children continue to operate the business.

The meat processing facility built by Otto Weber consisted of a slaughter house, processing room and sausage kitchen with cured and smoked meat processing equipment. It opened in 1947 and is still going strong 56 years later.

The award-winning cured meats and sausages manufactured by the Weber brothers” facility were popular at the Madison Farmers” Market. On Saturdays from April through November, Lee and his assistants made the 70-mile round trip to their stand on the square. They kept the same location for more than 20 years.

The Weber brothers have participated in educational programs at the state and national level, helping their colleagues with processing techniques, particularly the formation and production of boneless and semi-boneless hams. They readily share information with fellow processors and are available to help troubleshoot specific problems.

The brothers have been leaders in high school educational programs for home economics, science and agriculture students. They have opened their plant for FFA meat judging contests and have sponsored the state contest.

The Weber brothers are active as business and community leaders in Cuba City. Like his father, Reg is a longtime fire fighter. For years he has served as director of the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors. He was an advisor for the “All Around Butcher Program” at Southwest Technical College and was instrumental in the building of a state-of-the-art meat processing facility there in the 1970s.

Norm served as president of the Cuba City school board for several years and as a board member for more than 20 years. Lee was mayor of Cuba City and has served on the city council. David, also known as “Mr. Cuban,” was active in the Lions Club, holding the office of Tail Twister. He supported community and school functions until his death in 2003.

Reg and his wife Carol have two sons, Roudell and Scott. Norm and his wife Jeanette have two sons, Dan and Craig, and three daughters, Vicki, Karla and Julie. In 1993, Dan and Craig opened a meat processing operation in Geneseo, Ill. Craig died in 1995. In 2000, Scott joined Dan in running the Illinois operation. Lee and his wife Linda have one son, Otto. David was not married.