Jerry Lane, the president of Claxton Poultry, was recently installed as the 2014-215 chairman of the National Chicken Council.
It happened during the council's 60th annual conference held at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The National Chicken Council is a full-service, nonprofit trade association representing the U.S. chicken industry. It promotes and protects the interests of the chicken industry and serves as an important industry voice before Congress and federal agencies.
Council member companies include chicken producers and processors, poultry distributors and allied industry firms. Producers and processors account for approximately 95 percent of all chickens produced in the United States.
The United States maintains the largest broiler chicken industry in the world, employing more than 800,000 workers annually. Consumers spend more than $70 billion annually on chicken products.
Lane will head up the council's Board of Directors and supporting executive staff charged with developing policy and guiding advocacy efforts in such key poultry industry areas as environmental stewardship, food safety, animal welfare, international trade and many others.
"I am honored to serve as the incoming chair for the National Chicken Council," he said. "Our association and the industry it serves has made significant progress in the process of continually improving the quality and affordability of our poultry offerings domestically and to the world. It is my job to help accelerate that progress in answer to the needs of an increasingly demanding globe."
Lane, a veteran of 35 years in Georgia's poultry industry, has been with Claxton Poultry since 1985, serving as general manager and vice president after beginning his poultry career at Mar-Jac in 1978. He was named president of Claxton Poultry in 1997.
He has held a variety of leadership roles on a number of poultry industry boards and associations, including service as a member of the National Chicken Council 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 of the 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 Science in industrial and systems engineering and holds a Master of Business Administration from Brenau University. He and his wife, Kitty, live in Statesboro and have a grown daughter.