It's become an annual tradition in Leamington, but the Mennonite Central Committee Ontario has cancelled next month's canning event.
The committee says it's become too costly to ensure its 21-year-old mobile canner meets government regulations, so it's having a new one built in Pennsylvania. A new $500,000 canner, with greater capacity, will be ready in time for next year's event.
Material Resource Co-ordinator Bob Lebold says meat canned across North America goes to 60 countries around the world. "It'll go to orphanages. It'll go to schools," he says. "If you remember Haiti had the bad earthquake. MCC shipped canned meat down there."
Lebold says there's some meat stored in a Manitoba warehouse, but the committee will also have to rely on help from its sister organizations in the U.S.