Staff writer
Mennonites from Marion County packed cans of chicken last week to be sent around the world to feed the hungry.
Their work was part of a 45-year mission in 29 states and one Canadian province. This year’s six-month canning effort started Oct. 3 in Ohio and will finish April 27 in Ontario.
Mennonite Central Committee’s mobile meat canning equipment and truck were at the group’s North Newton facility, and volunteers from Marion County spent two days grinding chicken, packing it into cans, cooking it in oversized pressure cookers, labeling the cans, loading them into boxes, and packing them into a semi trailer.
Hillsboro resident Ken Koslowsky said it was too soon to know where all of the 328,000 or so cans this year’s effort will produce might end up.
Last year’s bounty found its way to Burundi, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, Ukraine, the United States, and Zambia. Four volunteers, none of them from Kansas this year, travel with the semi and equipment.
“The ones who travel with the canner, it’s generally a two-year term,” Koslowsky said.