By Gene Galin
Siler City, NC – Mountaire Farms hosted its annual signature give back event of the year “Thanksgiving for Thousands” program where employees and volunteers packed 26,000 meal boxes.
The Siler City event was held on Saturday, November 13 at the Mountaire Farms Siler City Processing Plant Employee Parking Lot in Siler City, NC.
Catherine Bassett walks us through the meal boxes assembly line.
Over 100 volunteers showed up to pack 5,000 boxes with a complete meal for a family of four. Catherine Bassett, Director of Communications and Community Relations explained that each box contained a Mountaire roaster chicken, corn, green beans, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, and brownie mix. She noted that this is the most meal boxes ever filled at the Siler City location.
This Thanksgiving for Thousands program has been growing as the company has been growing their presence here in North Carolina. The Siler City plant opened in 2019 and this is the third year for this event. As a company-wide effort this is the 27th year.
Mountaire had plans in place to give the meal boxes away once they were filled. The company had already prearranged with various nonprofits and churches to pick up the meal boxes and get them out in the community, to the people who really need it this Thanksgiving.
Sasha Duncan, the local community relations manager, that the company “had partnered with 79 organizations. We had registration open for about a month. And there’s a lot of unique organizations this year. It’s not just limited to churches. There are football teams and NC Works and 4H. Anybody that we can help the community through different organizations.”
Congressman Ted Budd stopped by to assist a bit. His family originally owned a Holly Farms hatching egg operation, which would ship to North Wilkesboro. It’s still a Black Angus cattle farm today.
Mountaire plans to do a similar event for Christmas. It is tentatively set to happen on December 11 in Siler City.