Prisons add deer meat to menus

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By Iowa City Press-Citizen

Published: 11/24/2003

A new program co-sponsored by the Iowa Department of Corrections and Department of Natural Resources has added deer meat to the menu in five state prisons, including the Iowa Medical Classification Center at Oakdale.
All told, about 19,000 pounds of venison donated by Iowa hunters eventually will be available for inmate meals ranging from venison stew to spaghetti and deer meatballs.
"It would literally be anything you could use ground beef in," said Janet Lowenberg, the food service director at the Iowa Medical Classification Center.
Legislators approved the initiative last year. The prison venison program is in conjunction with a DNR program aimed at controlling Iowa's deer population and, at the same time, feeding the needy.
The prisons pay meat lockers $1 per pound to process the venison. Lowenberg said Oakdale pays 99 cents for a pound of ground beef, 91 cents for a pound of ground pork and 43 cents for a pound of ground turkey.
Lowenberg said it takes between 200 and 240 pounds of ground meat just to serve one meal to Oakdale's 795 prisoners. The prison is contracted to receive 5,000 pounds - about 100 deer - of venison by the end of the hunting season.
So far, Lowenberg said the prison has used deer meat in two full meals and a partial meal. She said the inmates have taken a liking to the venison.
Ross Harrison, coordinator of DNR's Help Us Stop Hunger program, or HUSH, said there aren't enough hunters in Iowa to keep up with the deer population. HUSH and the prison venison program enable hunters to continue hunting after they fill their own freezers with venison. The meat is distributed to 55 Iowa counties through the Food Bank of Iowa.
Harrison said about $50,000 has been raised so far to process the donated deer meat.

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