FEEDING THE NEED
Meat canner makes annual stop in Harleysville
FRANCONIA » The 300 volunteers taking part in this year’s Mennonite Central Committee mobile meat canner three-day stop at the MCC Material Resource Center in Harleysville don’t know where the meat they’re helping prepare will end up.
Wherever it is, though, it will be, as informational materials say, “From our hearts to their hands — Feeding the need with love.”
About 23,500 pounds of ham was being canned, making about 15,000 cans of meat, Richard Godshall, one of the Harleysville organizers, said
the morning of April 2, the first day of the Harleysville stop. That’s about the same amount of meat as in previous years, he said.
All totaled, 637,896 cans of meat made by the canner were shipped in the fiscal year between April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017, according to MCC information. That included 220,122 cans to Ethiopia, 184,800 to the Ukraine,
83,370 to North Korea and 35,910 distributed in the United States.
“A single can of meat can feed a family of five for a day,” canner information says.
The meat is used to feed people “affected by droughts, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, extreme poverty, war, or other emergencies,” the information says.
“We have a good core group of volunteers every year,” Godshall said, “and we always have a few new faces.”
The about $45,000 per
year of cost for the Harleysville stop is covered by donations from churches, the community and local businesses, he said.
Clemens Food Group gives a discounted price for the meat, he said.
After being loaded, the cans are put in a pressure cooker and cooked for about two hours and 15 minutes, Godshall said.
“Then the cans come out and they’re handwiped, dried, then the volunteers put the labels on the cans,” he said, “and the cans are then datestamped,
coded for inspection purposes and they’re boxed.”
The boxes are put on pallets and shipped for storage until being distributed, he said.
“We have USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] inspectors here before we start and throughout the day to make sure everything is compliant and in good standing,” Godshall said.
Having started its 20172018 schedule Oct. 9-12, 2017 in Sterling, Ohio, this year’s final meat canner
stop is scheduled for April 30-May 3 in Learnington, Ontario, Canada.
“They do that because of the cold temperatures,” Godshall said. “The whole operation is during the colder months.”
Although it was April, there was snow the morning of the first day of the Harleysville stop. The snow didn’t stop the volunteers from showing up, though, Godshall said.
“We always appreciate everybody’s time and talent and help getting it done,” he said.