Thanks for the answers. Allow me to think out loud here...

A couple of reservations I have (apologies for being verbose);

1-2% is much too lean for me to make my ground jerky from without drastically changing the recipe and increasing labor which will up COGS—ingredients & related costs (e.g., I'd have to buy fat to add to the meat and run it through my meat grinder to remix/re-grind) I've used 97% lean before, and it was a disaster. I could see myself probably mixing in 73% or something, if the cost of your product was lower (especially if my customers like the meat from you and I if I could guarantee a certain volume purchase per month).

2. But $15/lb is almost 3x what I pay now, and more than what two packs of my jerky sells for. So I'd have to increase my prices (not even considering the above additional costs of ingredients/labor, and not even factoring in shipping from wherever you are to me), and I'm not planning on raising prices anytime in the next five years, at least.

I know that you're just looking for a test, but even with that, it's still too lean and too much $$ even if I did a one-off "ancestral blend" ground jerky product. My product is unique and I'm not changing over to muscle cut strips from my ground strips, because anyone can do muscle strip cuts in the jerky market (everyone does). The method and ingredients of my jerky differ such that I doubt there's a competition there.