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Forty-Ton Donation To Local Food Bank Will Serve High-Need Areas

Charlotte Tuggle
/
WBAA

Lafayette-based Food Finders received more than 40 tons of food Tuesday. The donation is set to go to counties with thousands of food-insecure residents.

Smithfield Foods and Kroger-Pay Less delivered more than 80,000 pounds of protein – including sausage, ham and bacon -- to the food bank.

Food Finders serves 16 counties that host 79,000 food insecure residents. President Katy Bunder says the usual donation is about 500 pounds of food, which usually lasts a week.

She says a donation this big will last about two months.

“What we’ll probably do is concentrate the donations to the pantries that serve the most people,” Bunder says. “And so, it will end up being a targeted population that gets more than one pound of meat each from this donation.”

She says the service area’s poorest counties are Howard and Tippecanoe. Bunder says the donation comes as many families are having to replace meals normally provided by schools.

Smithfield Foods Hunger Relief Director Dennis Pittman says Kroger-Pay Less reached out to them to bring in the donation.

“Today, there’s an assortment of pork products," he says. "I’ve seen Italian sausage, I’ve seen bacon, ham – all great, center-of-the-plate items, which are so difficult for the food banks to come by."

Kroger-Pay Less also donated $7,500 to the food pantry. He says they frequently make food donations of this size. 

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