Twenty months after a rainy spring groundbreaking ceremony where shovels turned over soggy Georgia clay, the ribbon was ready to be cut for the dedication ceremony with blustery winds, blue bird skies and temperatures struggling to make it out of the teens.

AccessNorthGa reports that, with coat collars turned up against the wind, members of the Georgia legislative delegation joined leaders of the Georgia poultry industry and Governor Nathan Deal for Friday morning’s ribbon cutting at the new 39,500-square-foot state-of-the-art facility on Abit Massey Way.

“No temperature can dampen the enthusiasm of this group and others in the poultry industry,” Georgia Poultry Federation President Emeritus (and roadway namesake) Abit Massey said.

Dr Massey pointed out that the scissors (13-feet 3-inches in length) being used to cut the ribbon in Friday’s ceremony was the same one used for the dedication of the building that the new facility is replacing, “built specially for the dedication of the Georgia Poultry Federation building in Gainesville in October of 1968”.

Governor Deal said: “The new laboratory is going to do a lot of things. It’s going to monitor and test for diseases, it’s going to check the quality of poultry flocks in our state and it’s going to routinely inspect hatcheries.”

“Georgia produces about 29.3 million pounds of chicken every day. This facility is going to serve the poultry industry well as the poultry industry serves the state of Georgia and the world well by producing quality, safe poultry products.”

State Agriculture Commissioner, Gary Black [pictured above] told the audience: “Let the word go out today that agriculture is not what we do because we can’t do anything else, agriculture in this state is what we must do, what we are called to do. It’s what we’re positioned to do for the next several generations.”