Community Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Indiana was living high on the hog Tuesday morning after receiving a 5,000-pound donation of ground pork from Indiana Pork.

The delivery was the first in what will be a total of 90,000 pounds earmarked for northeast Indiana over the next year.

“By next Wednesday none of this will be here,” said Jane Avery, executive director of Community Harvest Food Bank, gesturing at the large bin of pork. The ground meat comes in two-pound packages.

Avery said the pork producers came to her and said they wanted to provide a million meals of pork throughout the year. They don't want to make this a one-time donation, but would be donating significant amounts of pork in future years. This came at an ideal time for the food bank with the approaching winter months.

According to sources at Community Harvest Food Bank, the donation is the beginning of a plan by Indiana pork producers, industry partners, friends and the general public to donate pork to Indiana residents experiencing hunger. The plan was first announced last summer at the Indiana State Fair. The pork will be distributed statewide through the nine different food banks that are members of Feeding Indiana's Hungry Inc., Indiana's statewide network of food banks.

Michael Platt, executive director of Indiana Pork, reminded the gathering that Indiana is fifth in the nation in pork production, producing eight million hogs every year, which adds up to two billion pounds of pork.

Community Harvest Food Bank serves 460 agencies in northeast Indiana in nine counties: Allen, DeKalb, Adams, Noble, Whitley, Huntington, LaGrange, Wells and Steuben.

“We couldn't be happier to have these folks here showing their support for what we do,” Avery said. “This is an area that loves its pork,” she continued. “It's phenomenal, we can't thank them enough.”