Wildcat Country Market operations under COVID-19
April 15, 2020
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The Wildcat Country Market, the meat store operated by ACBS’s Food Product and Safety Laboratory (FPSL) and run by Dr. Sam Garcia, is committed to helping the Tucson community during the current COVID-19 situation and to helping with the shortage of some food items at local grocery stores. Since March 7, 2020, the market, designated as an essential service, has helped 800 customers who purchased 28,000 servings of beef and processed 150,000 protein servings for local livestock producers that resale their product and families that consume their own product. The market has provided roughly 2,500 pounds of pet food to customers, as well as, products to the Reid Park Zoo and Desert Museum. The market has also supplied 800 pounds of a spam like product to the Arizona Department of Agriculture (ADA). The ADA uses this product to bait insect traps and allows them to continue their testing and monitoring of insects in Arizona despite the shortage of spam in grocery stores. In addition to running the meat sale, the FPSL has been able to continue with testing food products and has completed food safety testing for six companies.
Meat Sale Information
To ensure a safe shopping experience for customers and staff, the market is segmenting community groups to different days and times:
Senior Citizens - Thursday 12pm - 4pm
Open to the Public - Friday 8am - 6pm
Our prevention methods ask that customers please line up in their vehicles and a student will come out to assist them. Market staff are wearing masks and gloves to assist customers and take orders with orders being filled and returned to the customer’s car to reduce traffic in the store. Customers who would like to shop in the store are admitted one at a time with sanitizing procedures occurring prior to the next customer coming in.
Address: 4181 N. Campbell Avenue in Tucson
Product varies by week and can include fresh grain fed beef, grass fed beef, pork, and lamb. For any changes to hours and product updates, please visit https://www.facebook.com/UAFPSL
