Cooper Farms Director of Corporate Development Eric Ludwig, left, Director of Live Production Terry Wehrkamp, COO Gary Cooper and Director of Food Processing Dale Hart show off the company’s The Jewell Award.

The Jewell award, named for poultry industry pioneer Jesse Jewell, was established to recognize a company that truly exhibits innovation in poultry processing.
“Cooper Farms represents everything that the Jewell award stands for. The company is a constant innovator whose products, processes and overall approach to business have raised the standard of excellence for the entire poultry industry,” said Bill McDowell, editorial director of Meatingplace and its sister publications. “We look forward to the innovations that Cooper Farms will bring to the industry in the coming years.”

In recent years, Cooper Farms has embraced many new technologies. Their most recent additions stand 279 feet tall and are located north of the company’s Cooked Meats location in Van Wert. The three wind turbines, added in 2011 and 2012, provide up to 75 percent of the plants electricity.

Cooper Farms became one of the first companies in the country to install Clean Room Slicing, a system which filters air to surgical standards within a slicing room to provide better quality and food safety. Since 2002, three more slicing lines have been added. As a part of the CRS expansion, Cooper Farms also added the technology of High Pressure Pasteurization. HPP is a process which applies an equal water pressure of 87,000 psi on packaged food products to destroy any possible pathogenic microorganisms. To help with this process, the Cooper Farms team designed a patent-pending method to transport the HPP vessels more efficiently.

“We are very proud to have the honor of being recognized as a pioneer in our industry,” said Gary Cooper, COO of Cooper Farms. “We have always worked to continuously improve our company and its processes. We know it’s the right thing to do for many reasons.”