Step 1: The mobile cannery arrives at the location, is unfolded and attached to a building.
Step 2: The boneless and skinless meat arrives in 2,000lb or 40lb boxes.
Then the meat is ground or cut by hand into 1x1 inch chunks. The four types of meat MCC cans are: turkey, beef, chicken and pork.
Step 3: Volunteers put the meat and a teaspoon of salt into each can.
Then the cans are weighed and volunteers add or remove meat until they weigh between 1.92-1.97lbs.
Step 4: Then a canner operator takes the weighed cans and puts them through the sealing machine. The sealed cans are caught by volunteers who stack the cans into an empty basket.
Step 5: The baskets are then placed into a retort, which is a large pressure cooker, where they cook for approximately 135 minutes at 246F with a pressure of approximately 15psi. After the processing is complete, the baskets are cooled using a continuous flow of water until the cans are safe to handle.
Step 6: The freshly cooked and cooled cans are individually dried off by volunteers.
Step 7: Volunteers apply a label to the finished cans indicating what kind of meat is inside.
Step 8: The labeled cans go through a printer which applies the production and expiration dates, before they are placed in boxes with 24 cans in each one.
Step 9: In a brief stay at a warehouse, the canned meat is incubated and held to make sure it’s safe. Then MCC sends canned meat (along with other material resources) around the world to those in need. Canned meat shares God’s love and compassion in a tangible way with families displaced from their homes because of war and other crises.
