By Abigail Wehrbein, USMEF intern
I am starting to understand why people say, “don’t ever grow up”. This summer I had to grow up fast. You may think just moving one state over is not so bad, but leaving Nebraska is harder then it looks, even if I get to see the beautiful mountains every day.
This summer my internship took me out to Denver, Colorado to work at the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF). The USMEF is a nonprofit trade association working to create new opportunities and develop existing international markets for U.S. beef, pork, lamb and veal. They have 17 international offices around the globe. I was fortunate to receive this internship by the sponsorship of the Nebraska Corn Board. Once May rolled around, I packed up my things and moved out west to the Mile-High City. Everything fell into place when I got the perfect opportunity to house-sit for a family here in Denver as well. Denver has great transportation throughout the city. I can take their light rail system into downtown and hop on a bus that drops me off right in front of the USMEF office.
The first few days on the job, I met everyone in the office and was assigned a few projects I’ll be working on this summer. For the main project, I’ll be traveling to the Tyson plant in Dakota City, NE. I will have a photographer take pictures of beef primal cuts that are specifically exported to countries and that are not commonly ate here in the U.S. I will then make a poster and a cut guide including these pictures.
After just three days working at USMEF, I traveled to Kansas City, MO for their annual Board of Directors Meeting and Product Showcase. 250 members from a broad cross-section of the meat industry and 120 international buyers joined the USMEF in Kansas City to discuss red meat exports and issues in the meat industry. It was a great experience to meet people from all over the world and catch an insight of how important our international markets are to the U.S. Dinner with the Nebraska Corn Board and the USMEF Chairman, Mark Jagels was a treat as well. I am really looking forward to everything I am going to learn this summer and hope it will help direct me towards a career path I want to pursue.
This is the front of the USMEF office I will be working at this summer in downtown Denver.
Read more about the Nebraska Corn Board supported internships here.
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