Last updated on December 1st, 2023
Smithfield Foods donated truckloads of food to food banks in the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area in November through its Helping Hungry Homes hunger relief program.
It also gave Smithfield hams and cash to support nonprofits in Virginia and North Carolina during the holidays.
“At Smithfield, we feel a tremendous responsibility to give back to the communities where our employees work, live, and raise their families,” said Jonathan Toms, senior community development manager.
“As a food company, we work tirelessly to fight hunger in the communities we call home and across the country. Especially during this holiday season, we’re proud to do our part to help support our neighbors facing food insecurity.”
On Nov. 17, Smithfield donated 50,000 pounds of ham, bacon, sausage and other products to support the Mayflower Marathon, a weekend-long food and fund drive that benefits the Virginia Peninsula Foodbank and Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore. The donations were the equivalent of 200,000 servings.
Smithfield also presented 350 hams to Healthy Suffolk and GET Empowered Community Development Corporation to support food distribution events leading up to Thanksgiving.
Healthy Suffolk served meals Nov. 16 to 150 senior citizens in Suffolk, Virginia, while GET Empowered provided more than 500 families in Hampton, Virginia, with Smithfield hams, grocery food bags and other holiday staples at a distribution event Nov. 18.
In North Carolina, Smithfield donated $1,500 to the Duplin County Partnership for Children to provide meal boxes for families of 100 children in Kenansville who participate in the Partnership’s Backpack Buddies program.
Smithfield’s Kenansville office employees held a Thanksgiving Boston butt sale, cooking 400 pork shoulders to raise funds to benefit the American Cancer Society and a fund to assist employees.
Smithfield also gave 120 Smithfield Hams to Liberty HomeCare and Hospice Services in Clinton and Triangle Veterans Wellness Outreach Center in Durham to distribute.
Since 2008, Smithfield’s hunger relief program, Helping Hungry Homes, has provided hundreds of millions of servings of protein to all 50 U.S. states, as well as in Poland, Romania and Mexico.
In 2022, Smithfield donated nearly 25 million servings of protein to food banks, disaster relief efforts and community outreach programs across the U.S. The company has pledged to donate 200 million servings of protein by 2025.
Read more meat news from The Shelby Report.
