FAQs

SSR stands for Sustainable Swine Resources, and we are a division of Johnsonville. Johnsonville is a proud family-owned sausage company based in Wisconsin. While Johnsonville makes fantastic sausage products, SSR’s focus is finding value and purpose for the parts of the animal that are not used for sausage. We wholeheartedly believe in being as sustainable as possible and ensuring that 0% of the animal goes to waste. 

We primarily source and harvest tissue from sows, however we have the flexibility to source other porcine animal types/ages depending upon your needs. 

Butcher pigs or market hogs, commonly harvested for pork chops, bacon, ham, and other pork products, are typically around six months of age and roughly 280 lbs. A sow is an older female animal who has had at least one litter of piglets. Our source sows are between 400-500+ lbs., and between 18 months-5 years of age. Since sows are a larger and more mature animals, there are many benefits to sourcing sow tissue, including larger sized tissues, stronger tensile strength, and many others. 

SSR has a wide range of customers from small locally owned pet food companies to large medical device companies and everything in between. We also work closely with universities and medical device companies looking for tissue for research purposes. We love getting to know our partners to ensure they have the best possible experience sourcing porcine tissue. 

The SSR Customization Center is a dedicated room off of the harvest floor which provides a clean processing space for tissues. This enables us to do additional trimming, wash steps, or additional processing as requested. We work closely with our customers to ensure we harvest material to their specifications.

As a division of Johnsonville, our harvest facilities are USDA inspected and regulated. All our harvest facilities have a Quality Management System and are SQF (Safe Quality Food) Certified and audited. We also have robust HACCP plans in place. Our tissues and products are sourced from animals that have passed USDA ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection.

SSR is ISO 22442-2 compliant, and partners with each customer to ensure all requirements for each project are met to your satisfaction.

Yes, we can offer traceability throughout our supply chain back to the animal buying station or farm.

We have three harvest facilities across the Midwest (Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kansas) from which we harvest tissues. Depending on your volume needs and location, we can utilize tissue from one or even all three plants for a project.

We offer a wide variety of shipping and packaging options to meet your needs. From shipping fresh tissue overnight via FedEx or UPS to shipping LTL on a freezer truck, we can ensure that your shipping needs are met. Additionally, we have several high quality food grade packaging solutions to choose from, and we can ship material on wet or dry ice.