McHenry Times

Republican state Rep. Steve Reick is thinking of those less fortunate this holiday season, encouraging those who are able to purchase Butterball Gift Checks that can be donated to local food pantries.

“As we approach the holidays, let’s not forget our less fortunate neighbors,” Reick said in a post to Facebook. “This year there’s a shortage of turkeys, but I found a great gift program from Butterball that allows you to buy gift certificates that can be given to your local food pantry, which can then be distributed to their clients. The pandemic continues to put many strains on all of us, and I encourage you to think about donating some of these certificates to your local food pantry.”

Butterball Gift Checks can be purchased online for any dollar amount. The recipient can then take them to virtually any grocery store to be redeemed for turkey or other grocery food items.

The University of Illinois Extension reports an estimated 46 million turkeys are eaten each Thanksgiving in the U.S. and nearly nine in 10 Americans eat turkey on the holiday. This year’s festivities figure to be different than most with the USDA reporting turkey inventories are down some 24% from their three-year average volumes, and production of turkeys is down compared to the average year as well.

According to the Department of Agriculture’s Turkey Report, the costs of whole frozen turkeys are about 26 cents a pound more this year than last, and the USDA adds that wholesale prices for frozen whole-hen turkeys averaged the highest monthly price in September since the series started in 2006.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Feeding America reports national food insecurity levels were at a 20-year low. Once the crisis hit, the organization reports those numbers ticked upward to mean as many as 9.7 percent of people could go hungry in the Lake County area alone in 2020, according to Patch.

While the USDA did not release county-level data, it did look at how many people in Illinois had low food security or very low food security at any point in 2020.

Overall, researchers found that 4,979,000 households in Illinois struggled with food insecurity in 2020 with nearly 4 percent of those individuals reporting they had very low food security.

Across the country in 2020, in the neighborhood of 7.6% of U.S. children were food insecure at some point during the year, an increase from 6.5 % in 2019. In addition, food insecurity also increased for all households with children, jumping from 13.6% in 2019 to 14.8% in 2020.