Chicken Council Elects New Officers
US - Bill Lovette, president and chief executive officer of Pilgrim’s Corporation, Greeley, Colorado, has been elected to serve as 2012-2013 chairman of the National Chicken Council (NCC) during NCC’s Board of Directors meeting held in Washington, D.C.
18 October 2012
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Serving as vice chairman is Michael Helgeson, chief executive officer of GNP Company, St. Cloud, Minnesota. New to the officer corps, Jerry Lane, president of Claxton Poultry in Claxton, Georgia, takes over as Secretary-Treasurer. Officers serve one-year terms.
Mr Lovette joined Pilgrim’s as president and chief executive officer on 3 January, 2011. He served as president and chief operating officer of Case Foods for the previous two years. Before that, Mr Lovette spent 25 years with Tyson Foods in various roles in senior management, including president of its international business unit, president of its foodservice business unit, and senior group vice president of poultry and prepared foods.
Mr Helgeson has served as CEO and a member of the board of directors of GNP Company (formerly Gold’n Plump Poultry) since 1993. He joined the company in 1974 and worked in various divisions, including new products manager in the sales and marketing division, project manager in the broiler division, personnel manager at the Cold Spring, Minnesota, processing plant, and purchasing/elevator manager in the feed and grain division. He spent his first two years in Indonesia researching and developing a broiler operation.
Jerry Lane, a veteran of 34 years in Georgia’s poultry industry, has been with Claxton Poultry since 1985, serving as General Manager and Vice President. He was named President in 1997. Prior to joining Claxton, Mr Lane began his poultry career at Mar Jac Poultry in 1978.
Mr Lane has held a variety of leadership roles with a number of local and national poultry groups and associations, including serving as: a member of the NCC Board of Directors; a member of the Georgia Governors Agriculture Commission; president, senior vice president and board member of the Georgia Poultry Federation; past chairman, Georgia Poultry Improvement Association; and a board member of N.W. Fries, Inc. and Claxton Bank. He is also a life member of the Poultry Leaders Roundtable.
Lane graduated in 1972 from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He is also a graduate of Brenau University with a Masters of Business Administration.
