Tanana Valley Meats

Something is rotten in Tanana Valley Meats:

FAIRBANKS — After Travis Marsh shot his first moose back in September, a nice 52-inch bull near Delta Junction, he couldn’t have been happier. The thought of having a full freezer of tasty, high-protein meat made his mouth water.
[...]
But Marsh and Morgan were left with a bad taste in their mouths after waiting almost two months to get their meat back, and they say it was rancid. Not to mention the fact that Marsh dropped off 421 pounds of meat to be processed and got back less than 200 pounds.

I processes my own game (the way god intended), but I've heard good things about Interior Alaskan Fish Processors (Aka Santa's Smokehouse). Their rates are reasonable, and I've eaten their breakfast sausage, and it isn't half bad! Not as good as our own, of course! ;)

Nothing pisses off someone more than working hard to catch an animal, only to have it go bad on them for things outside their control. All the effort, and this place just ruins it all. And then there's this gem:

Miller said he has a list of about a half-dozen customers who have called to complain about how long it took to process their meat or the bad-tasting meat. One of the complainants is threatening a civil suit against the Tanana Valley Meats because he and his hunting partners took in 315 pounds of moose meat to get ground up and it all came back bad.

In that case, Miller said he offered to replace the hunter’s 315 pounds of moose with beef, a trade the hunter seemed receptive to but had not agreed to as of Friday. In other cases, the plant has reduced processing fees or offered full refunds, he said.

 My head would explode, if it were me in that situation. Replace with beef? Are you nuts? I don't want to eat beef, I want to eat moose! It'd be like replacing bars of gold with a bag of rocks. I'm getting angry just thinking about it, and I didn't even have my meat ruined! And then the owner goes on to blame the hunters. If it were just a few, that might be believable, but this large number? Blah.

It sounds like there's a resounding `Don't use Tanana Valley Meats`