Agricultural News
Oklahoma Pork Council Provides Meals, Assistance in Tornado-Ravaged Areas
Fri, 24 May 2013 13:02:43 CDT
Normally, Memorial Day weekend is a time for rest and relaxation and is often spent on the patio with the barbecue grill. While a lot of people will be doing that this weekend, there are an awful lot of families in central Oklahoma who will still be picking up the pieces of their shatter lives after last weekend's tornadoes.
Roy Lee Lindsey, executive director of the Oklahoma Pork Council said in an interview with Radio Oklahoma Network's Ron Hays that his organization has mobilized to help feed victims, first responders, and clean-up crews in Moore and other devastated areas. (You can hear their full conversation by clicking on the LISTEN BAR below.)
"We've been able to work with the folks at Operation Barbecue, which is a group of barbecue competition teams that got together and now travel across the country to these natural disaster sites. They started after the Joplin tornado. They went to Hurricane Sandy up in the Northeast. Now they're here in Moore."
He said the Oklahoma Pork Council has donated 2,000 pounds of pork butts to the effort. Seaboard Farms has sent them 2,300 pounds of pork butts. Tyson has also joined in the mass feeding efforts with their Meals that Matter truck.
Lindsey said that Moore is getting a lot of the publicity due to the scale of the devastation there, but we need to remember there are people in other areas such as Newcastle, Shawnee, Little Axe, and Carney who have suffered devastation as well. He said his organization is in contact with the State Emergency Management Office and is willing to do more and to help in these less publicized areas.
The Pork Council will be in Shawnee on Saturday, grilling 1,000 pork burgers for disaster relief over there.
He said the meals are for the people who are without due to the storms, but also for those who would like to come and donate to relief efforts.
He said he has received calls from pork producers' councils all across the country asking to help feed people in need during this difficult time.
"That's been almost overwhelming--that response has been--from my colleagues around the country and from just pork producers from all over the country. And I think it speaks volumes of the people that work in our industry."
Lindsey says that overall as grilling gets underway this summer, consumers will see that various cuts of pork have been renamed to make it easier to compare pork cuts with beef cuts. For example, he says, when someone picks up a ribeye chop, it corresponds to the ribeye beef steak.
He says another item that will be popular this summer is ground pork. He says the flavor and texture make a wonderful addition to the regular fare of beef burgers.
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