N.C. gives thanks for economic impact of Butterball turkeys

Raising turkeys is big business in North Carolina. The state ranks second in total production (32.5 million turkeys per year), trailing only Minnesota (42 million). 

Butterball, the major producer of turkeys in the United States, is based in the Old North State. The company’s headquarters is in Garner, and Butterball maintains major operations in the eastern North Carolina communities of Clinton, Goldsboro, Mount Olive and Raeford. 

Sampson County is the epicenter of the turkey farming business in North Carolina. About 295 people live in the Town of Turkey on N.C. Route 24 in eastern Sampson County. “Turkey Town” caught the eye of Jared Brumbaugh, a news reporter with Public Radio East in New Bern.

Brumbaugh learned from former Turkey mayor Leon Clifton that the first settlers in the early 1700s had named the place Springville. During the town’s early history, a rafter of wild turkeys moved into a swampy area near the village. Folks regarded that as a sign, renaming their settlement as Turkey and naming the swamp as Turkey Creek. 

In 2019, Sampson County newsmakers “Bread” and “Butter” received “National Turkey” pardons in 2019 from U.S. President Donald Trump.

 

The Broad Breasted White turkeys were raised by Wellie Jackson, owner of Illusion Farms in Clinton, a fourth-generation farmer and a contract grower for Butterball. 

Jackson was selected to raise the presidential flock by the late Kerry Doughty, former president and CEO of Butterball. Doughty served as chair of the National Turkey Federation (NTF) in 2019. 

Typically, the current chair of the NTF has the honor of raising the presidential turkeys or selecting a farmer to do the deed. 

After “Bread” and “Butter” were pardoned, they retired to Gobbler’s Rest on the university farms at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., cared for by students and faculty in the Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences, a unit of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. 

According to freelance writer Mary Patterson Broome, the term “Butterball” was first trademarked in 1940 by deli owner Ada Walker of Wyoming, Ohio (near Cincinnati). Leo Peters of Grand Rapids, Mich., bought the trademark from Walker in 1951. 

Peters leased “Butterball” to Swift and Company, a Chicago meat packer that sold turkeys, in 1954. He sold Swift the trademark in the 1960s. 

ConAgra bought the Butterball brand from Swift in 1990. 

While Butterball wasn’t born in North Carolina, “it got here as soon as it could,” jokes the state’s agriculture commissioner. It was a winding road, however. 

Ottis S. Carroll of Turkey, N.C., established Carroll’s Foods in nearby Warsaw. Carroll’s joined forces in the 1980s with another North Carolina turkey grower, Maxwell Farms of Goldsboro (an affiliate of Goldsboro Milling Co.), which was founded by Hugh Gillespie Maxwell Jr. and family. 

The new company took the name Carolina Turkeys Co., and a large processing plant was built in Mount Olive. 

Then, Smithfield Foods, Inc., of Smithfield, Va., acquired Carroll’s Foods in 1999, becoming Maxwell’s new partner in the Carolina Turkeys enterprise. Carolina Turkeys purchased the Butterball brand from ConAgra in 2006 and officially changed the company name to Butterball LLC. 

In 2010, Maxwell bought Smithfield’s interest in Butterball and formed a new partnership with Seaboard Corporation of Merriam, Kan., near Kansas City. Seaboard is a diverse multinational agribusiness and transportation conglomerate. It ranks 406 on the Fortune 500 list.

 

Share the Butterball story around the Thanksgiving table…and propose a toast to “Bread” and “Butter.”