This article was originally published by The Mennonite

MCC begins 73rd season of meat canning

Caption for media: MCC mobile cannery crew members are (from left) Gabriel Eisenbeis, Kendall Weaver, and Tristan Pries. Not pictured: Nathan Stoltzfus. MCC photo/Brenda Burkholder2019-2020

Photo: MCC mobile cannery crew members are (from left) Gabriel Eisenbeis, Kendall Weaver and Tristan Pries. Not pictured: Nathan Stoltzfus. MCC photo/Brenda Burkholder

Mennonite Central Committee began its 73rd year of canning meat for people in crisis around the world on Oct. 7. Volunteers have been participating in this project for almost three-quarters of the century that MCC has existed.

In 2020, MCC will celebrate 100 years of service to people in need, and the canning program has been a constant part of helping fulfill this mission. During the 2018-2019 fiscal year, MCC shipped more than 570,000 cans of meat to 10 countries, plus the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

Nyadieng Gach Gatkouth, 21, collects the monthly supply of two cans of meat each for herself and her 1-year-old daughter, Nyamal Deng Lam. As refugees who fled war in their home country of South Sudan, they live with 62,000 refugees in Jewi Refugee camp in Ethiopia. MCC photo/Rose Shenk

Almost half of those cans of meat, each containing 24 ounces, were sent to Ethiopia to feed refugee children under 2 who are at risk of malnutrition and refugee mothers who are pregnant or lactating. About 62,000 South Sudan refugees, who have fled war in their home country, live in Jewi Refugee Camp in Ethiopia.

This year’s four-member canning crew will coordinate the canning process at 32 locations across the United States and Canada from October through April. The men will drive the mobile cannery, where they cook and seal the meat in cans, to each location where volunteers are prepared to help them.

More than 30,000 volunteers make the project possible by purchasing the meat and cutting it into chunks as well as filling, carrying and labeling the cans and packaging them for shipping—all in accordance with federal food safety regulations.

MCC was formed when representatives of various Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren groups met in July 1920 in Elkhart, Indiana, and pledged to aid hungry people, including Mennonites in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine). The first feeding operations began March 16, 1922, at Khortitsa. MCC sent a shipment of 25 tractors and plows to southern Russia in June 1922.

In the 1940s, MCC, with Brethren and Friends, administered the Civilian Public Service (CPS) program for conscientious objectors to war. Some of the food for the CPS camps was home-canned by members of MCC’s supporting churches. The decision was made to send similar food to Europe after World War II, but the glass containers often broke on the difficult journey across the sea and war-torn continent.

Using metal containers instead required the use of special equipment. Rather than buying their own, communities in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1945 began transporting the equipment on a wagon between local canning sites. This idea eventually led to the construction of the first long-distance mobile cannery in Hesston, Kansas, in 1946.

This year’s mobile cannery, the fourth and most modern version, will be managed by MCC’s experienced canners: Tristan Pries of Loma Plata, Paraguay; Nathan Stoltzfus of Narvon, Pennsylvania; and Kendall Weaver of Wooster, Ohio. The team will be completed with a new canner, Gabriel Eisenbeis of Freeman, South Dakota.

They began Oct. 7 in Sterling, Ohio, at Harvest Call, an Apostolic Christian organization, followed by Central Christian School in Kidron, Ohio, on Oct. 12. The season will end in late April in Elmira and Leamington, Ontario.

To learn more about MCC’s canning program, including its history and current schedule, visit mcc.org/canning.

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