COLD SPRING (WJON News) -- Rocori High School kids are getting to go hog wild in the district's new meat-cutting class. WJON first told you about the new class being added in December and now it has been in full swing for about 3 weeks.

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Students are learning how to identify different cuts of meat, actually cut meat, and package it. Agricultural Instructor Tamara Berger says right now they are working on pigs but they hope to do other cuts in the future:

"Moving forward if we're able to kind of do a, beef gets very complicated and so we would love to incorporate that at some point whether it be in this class or maybe like a step up level 2 sort of meat processing class at some point."

Berger says they had to turn away kids because the demand for the class was so high, and the class will let the students get a head start in an industry that is looking for workers:

"The industries really needing those, those jobs and those people that are interested and wanting to learn and so I think this is the best thing that we can do for continuing to have our meat industry be successful."

She says the first two weeks of the course were spent learning safety, how to identify cuts, and practicing knife skills on melons before the kids got to actually start cutting the meat in week 3.

Berger says the school will be getting a processing permit too so they can sell the retail cuts to students and parents to help cover some of the class costs.

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