Pinckneyville Prison Fish Processing Center
Submitted by Doug Wojcieszak

The processing center is currently in the design stages. We hope to break ground this summer, and have the facility open for business during winter/early spring next year. The processing center will be approximately 14,000 square feet in size, and it will have a maximum capacity of 20 million pounds of fish annually. The processing line will be mostly manual, so it will handle to a wide variety of farm-raised fish, including-but not limited to-catfish, tilapia, trout, perch, and hybrid striped bass. The processing center will not buy fish, it will simply charge $0.20-0.22 cents per pound live weight to process the fish. The fee includes a box to package the fish. This processing fee is half the industry average. Furthermore, we are removing the "middle man" and allowing fish farmers to earn a greater percentage of the wholesale value of their processed fish. Professional fish brokers will be working with the processing center and fish farmers to market processed fish to the wholesale market. More details on the project will become available in July.