South O’Brien FFA Competes at National Meats Competition in Indianapolis


by Caden Wittrock –
South O’Brien FFA Chapter Reporter
On November 2, 2023, the National FFA Meats competition was held at Purdue University. This year’s team consisted of Gabe Moermond, Brelee Rasmussen, Bensen Rohwer, and Brett Evans.
The National FFA Meats Technology and Evaluation CDE is a competitive event that tests students’ skills and competencies in evaluating and identifying meat carcasses and products. Event components include a general knowledge exam; beef carcass evaluation; identification of wholesale and retail cuts of beef, lamb, and pork; quality and yield grading of beef carcasses; a team meat merchandising event; and solving a meat formulation problem. Each team has competed on the local and state levels to earn the privilege of representing their state at the National FFA Convention and Expo.
The South O’Brien team practices puts in many hours during the summer with the goal of doing well at the state event in order to qualify for nationals. The team finished as the overall champion at the state event in August, which gave them a ticket to the national contest.
At Nationals, the team placed 19th out of 43 teams and received a silver rating. South O’Brien FFA Advisor, Eric Kumm, said “One of the advisors in our bus group who had a team in the Food Science contest, overheard some advisors doing a little math about participating in a national event. Unofficially, they came up with only 0.017 percent out of the 700,000 FFA members compete in a national contest each year. So it’s a pretty elite group that our team is a part of. We learned some new tips to hopefully help out teams that may advance in the future. I’m proud to the work the team did to prepare and they represented South O’Brien and Iowa very well.”
The contest was held during the National FFA Leadership Conference, so the team got to do many different activities outside of just competing. Moermond said that everyone should strive to compete in a national contest. Even better, during national convention week so you get to secure your spot to take in all the fun that the convention has to offer.