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The newest member of the Mississippi Poultry Hall of Fame is Jones County native Steve McLaurin of Peco Foods.

McLaurin has a broad range of experience in the poultry industry over his 45 years, including owning breeder and broiler farms, working for a renderer and in live production for several poultry processors. He has served on the Mississippi Poultry Association Board of Directors for more than two decades, including three times as chairman of the MPA Board of Directors (2009, 2015 and 2020).

McLaurin is special projects manager for Peco Foods, headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The company has 3,000 employees in Mississippi in processing plants in Bay Springs, Canton and Sebastopol, and other facilities in Lake, Philadelphia and West Point.

Prior to his current position, McLaurin was live operations manager for Peco Foods in Sebastopol. In his long career, he has worked for B.C. Rogers, Sanderson Farms and Griffin Industries.

McLaurin grew up on a farm in the Big Creek community in Jones County.

Peco Director of Operations Roddy Sanders describes Steve as “one of a kind, self-motivated, committed and he always keeps me abreast of what is happening.”

Bud West, a 2011 Hall of Fame inductee and fellow Jones Countian, said McLaurin “is serious about his work and his responsibilities. He is always focused on getting the job done. He’s a good man. He stays on it until he gets the work done, whatever it is.”

Since he graduated from Mississippi State University in poultry science in 1979, McLaurin and his wife Kay, whom he met at MSU, have been lifelong supporters of the university. They endowed a landscape architecture scholarship in honor of a high school friend of his who died of cancer. McLaurin frequently returns to share his expertise with classes in the Poultry Science Department and he serves on the department’s advisory board.

In 2020, he was selected as a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Distinguished Alumni Fellow for the MSU Poultry Science Department.

McLaurin has been instrumental in raising funds for scholarships for poultry science students through the Mississippi Poultry Foundation.

“I grew up with that farmer mentality of taking care of family, neighbors and the land,” he said.

McLaurin is the 37th member of the Mississippi Poultry Hall of Fame since it was created in 1973. The portraits of previous inductees in the hall at the Mississippi State University Poultry Science Department and include founders of companies, professors and researchers, and those important in the growth and development of the industry into the state’s largest agricultural industry.

He was introduced as the latest member at the Mississippi Poultry Association’s annual convention on Sept. 16.

Poultry and eggs are Mississippi’s largest agricultural industry, with a $23 billion economic impact. The MPA, founded in 1937, is composed of poultry and egg processors, growers and allied companies.

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