Lampkin Butts, president and chief operating officer of Sanderson Farms, Laurel, Mississippi, has been installed as Chairman of the National Chicken Council, the trade association for the US chicken production and processing industry.
Bill Lovette, president and CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, Greeley, Colorado, took office as Vice Chairman, and Michael Helgeson, chief executive officer of GNP Company, St. Cloud, Minnesota, became Secretary-Treasurer.
The new officers were installed during the NCC Annual Conference held in Washington, D.C., and attended by members of the industry from across the country. Officers serve one-year terms.
Butts has been president and COO of Sanderson Farms, a publicly traded company since November 2004. He has been with the company since 1973, working his way up through a variety of assignments and serving as processing division manager, director of processing and sales, and vice-president of sales. He was elected to the Sanderson Farms board of directors in 1998.
Lovette joined Pilgrim’s (NYSE: PPC) as president and chief executive officer on January 3, 2011. He served as president and chief operating officer of Case Foods for the previous two years. Before that, 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.
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.
Source: National Chicken Council