A meat market manager for a large grocery store is preparing a processing plan to stock the shelves with sausage, ground meat, and jerky, which he can prepare from beef, pork and venison. Sausage and ground meat can be made of any mix of the beef, pork and venison, as long at the fat contents are below 15% for sausage and 10% for ground meat. Sausage sells for $5/pound and ground meat sells for $3/pound. Jerky, which sells or $10/pound, is made in a drying process from beef or venison. In the drying process, there is a 50% loss in weight for jerky made from beef (e.g., one pound of beef yields 0.5 pounds of beef jerky) and a 30% loss in weight for jerky made from venison. The market can sell at most 500 pounds of sausage, 1000 pounds of ground meat, and 100 pounds of jerky before their expiration dates. There are currently 1,000 pounds of beef (10% fat content), 500 pounds of pork (8% fat content), and 200 pounds of venison (2% fat content) available for processing.
Refer to Exhibit 4-3. Determine the optimal processing plan for the meat market.