Sophomore Abigail Bearce says her degree in fish, wildlife and conservation biology will be tarnished if Colorado State University moves ahead with plans to place a meat packing facility on the campus, which prides itself on 21st-century environmental practices.

“I came here for the sustainability aspects of the university,” said Bearce, who is minoring in global environmental sustainability. “It’s just the hypocrisy of CSU to call itself an advocate of sustainability but it’s still encouraging the production and processing of animals. That’s the worst thing that can be done to the environment.”

Bearce and other animal rights advocates oppose construction of the $20 million JBS Global Food Innovation Center, planned to house the university’s meat science program, complete with cattle and poultry processing.

JBS, the world’s largest protein processor, is providing $7.5 million to help construct the 38,000-square-foot structure at the site of a parking lot directly south of the Animal Science Building and not far from Morgan Library. JBS is also donating $5 million for educational programs at the center.

JBS USA operates a meat processing plant in nearby Greeley.

CSU’s agricultural sciences program has long needed a bigger, more centralized place for the growing meat science program, say university officials. Currently, there is no space on or off campus for students to learn slaughtering techniques.

Students learn culling techniques through field trips and video lessons, said CSU spokesman Mike Hooker.

The new building will include a multilevel auditorium and a cafe. Students will work alongside university and industry experts in nearly every aspect of food safety and security and animal welfare, said Ajay Menon, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences.

“To characterize the facility as a ‘slaughterhouse’ does not accurately represent the range of activities that will take place,” said Menon.

The facility will be home to research on preventing and detecting food borne illnesses, innovations in food packaging design and identifying best practices in food preparation, and it will provide exposure to retail food service operations, Menon said.

The 1,000-square-foot processing center, which will host the Live Animal and Carcass Evaluation class, was designed by CSU professor Temple Grandin, an internationally regarded expert in animal welfare, Menon said.

The teaching and demonstration facility will be similar to those found at other land grant agricultural campuses such as Michigan State University, University of California at Davis, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State University, University of Nebraska and Kansas State University.

Depending on circumstances, five to eight animals a month or semester will be killed and processed there.

“This is not a production facility,” Menon said. “No one walking or working near the center will be able to see, hear or smell anything coming from inside the processing area.”

That doesn’t placate critics, who say the processing portion of the center runs counter to CSU’s position as one of the most environmentally aware campuses in the world.

“There is nothing innovative about the brutal practices that JBS is trying to bring to CSU’s campus with the proposed slaughter facility,” said Aidan Cook, Colorado organizer of Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights group. “No matter how JBS tries to dress this up, slaughtering animals on campus at CSU would be a huge step backward for the university and its students.”

JBS officials could not be reached for comment.

Officials say CSU’s environmental credentials are beyond reproach.

CSU is the first university in the world to twice be given the highest rating for its sustainability efforts from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

More than 800 universities and colleges around the world are rated by the association. This is the fourth year CSU has achieved the highest scores of all universities.

CSU offers more than 800 credit courses and 391 non-credit continuing education courses that are related to sustainability. The school offers an organic agriculture program that emphasizes organic food and fiber production without the use of synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

About 25 people gathered in mid-April to protest construction of the JBS center, and an online campaign that calls CSU “Cruelty State University” drew almost 44,000 supporters.

But there has been no widespread opposition to the processing center, which is scheduled to be finished in 18 months — at least among students in the department of animal sciences, said Jason Kosovksi, spokesman for the College of Agricultural Sciences

“In fact, they have lobbied for this facility so that they can remain competitive with their counterparts at peer institutions such as Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Texas A&M, all of which have similar facilities on campus,” said Kosovski in a letter to the CSU student newspaper.

Menon, a former vegetarian, says he understands critics’ arguments. However, he said CSU must meet the needs of meat eaters, who comprise 95 percent of the world’s population, and those who will provide food for them.

“Animal protein will continue to be important and more relevant to this world’s population,” he said. “There is an entire industry to be served with the better practices and better students.”