Food Processing - Animal Proteins

Breaking down a pork carcass into clean, market-ready cuts is a precise skill, and Manitoba’s meat plants need people who can do it safely. Assiniboine’s Food Processing (Animal Proteins) certificate is an 11-month cohort programme for international students at the Victoria Avenue East campus in Brandon, preparing you to start work straight away in retail meat cutting or industrial processing.

Course work opens with Safety, Tools, Sanitation, Meat Composition & Nutrition, FoodSafe 1, Fire Safety, WHMIS 1 and 1st Aid - Emergency, so you understand meat structure, grading, inspection and safe handling before you pick up a knife. Species courses then build cutting skills: Pork, Pork - International Cuts, Bovine Species - Front Quarter, Poultry and Ovine Species and Seafood. Curing and Smoking, Sausage Making and Value Added Processing show how raw cuts become finished products, and Communication - Retail Meats prepares you for the counter. International students also take Cdn Intercultural Awareness, Seminar and Workplace Communication.

Throughout the programme you work to Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and food safety standards while preparing poultry, beef, pork, goat, lamb, fish and value-added items. The programme ends with a 12-week Practicum - MTPR, a paid placement in either a wholesale or a retail meat-cutting environment. Before practicum you must be 18, submit the Food Processing Self Declaration form and pass the required medical and kinesiology tests. Graduates leave with First Aid, WHMIS, FoodSafe and Fire Safety.

Food Processing graduates work as industrial butchers, meat cutters, poultry preparers, sausage makers, retail meat counter clerks and production line workers in abattoirs, processing plants, specialty meat shops, supermarkets and retail butcher shops. It suits physically fit people who are comfortable with physical, fast-paced processing work.