MEAT MAKER TURNS ERROR INTO 12-TON GIFT

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 11, 1992                   TAG: 9202110120
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LISA SWIRSKY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
MEAT MAKER TURNS ERROR INTO 12-TON GIFT
The Rescue Mission is always on the lookout for a few good donations. Now they are looking for a few good recipes - for salami.
Nearly 12 tons of salami were delivered to the Roanoke mission's storage facility at Roanoke Ice and Cold Storage on Monday morning. That's enough to make roughly 240,000 sandwiches.
Valleydale Packers donated the salami, which had been mislabeled.
"We decided to give it away rather than relabel it," said Daniel "Bud" Oakey, merchandising manager for Valleydale.
Most of the salami will go to the Rescue Mission, a privately funded soup kitchen and shelter in Roanoke. The rest will be distributed to food pantries and shelters throughout the Roanoke Valley.
Last year, the mission served more than 136,000 meals to the homeless and the hungry, said Joy Sylvester-Johnson, the mission's director of development. On recent nights, the shelter has dished out food for 300 to 500 people.
Because of donations like Valleydale's, the mission is able to keep its costs to 16 cents per meal. Grocery stores and restaurants regularly donate food.
This is not the first time in the mission's 45-year history that it has benefited from a company's misfortune.
"Once we received a truckload of ice cream that was going to melt," Sylvester-Johnson said. "That was a good one."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB