Thunder Sticks! Terry Emmert's Water Buffalo Pepperoni Is Being Sold at Moda Center

BUFFALO BILLS: Emmert offers visitors a care package of meat products made from his herd of water buffalo, including pepperoni sticks, jerky and ground meat.

The Portland Thunder, the city's new arena football franchise, is 0-2 after a last-minute loss Monday night to the Iowa Barnstormers.

But team owner Terry Emmert is a winner.

That's because Emmert, a Clackamas County heavy-hauling mogul, has realized his ambition of augmenting Moda Center concession stands with pepperoni sticks made from his personal herd of water buffalo.

Emmert has been a longtime advocate of water buffalo as a low-fat alternative to beef. He owns a herd of more than 400 water buffalo on ranches outside Oregon City, as well as a slaughterhouse and meat-packing plant in Sandy.

(The animals have, at times, gotten him in hot water with state environmental regulators.)

Now he has a market: the Thunder, who are playing to roughly 8,000 fans in the downtown Rose Quarter.

Freelance reporter Ryan White spotted the pepperoni sticks at Monday's game. His photo shows Emmert is using the brand name he revealed to WW early this month: "Thunder Sticks." (Under the new, larger rubric of "Thunder Snacks.")

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We'll be frank: They were delicious.

WWeek 2015

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