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It's Your Money: Weststar Food Company
Posted: Feb 6, 2013 4:30 PM by Jessica Holley - jholley@kristv.com
Updated: Feb 6, 2013 5:48 PM
CORPUS CHRISTI - The Weststar Food Company has been a part of this community for a decade. Over the years it's sold raw beans to the US Department of Agriculture. And those beans bought with your money can be found in food banks across the nation.
Some may call them the magical fruit, but for the Weststar Food Company it's business. And millions of these beans are packaged right here in Corpus Christi. Their bean packaging warehouse opened on Port Avenue 10 years ago, and stays busy because of the large consumption of beans in South Texas.
"Majority of what we do is pinto beans. It's probably 95%. But we also do black bean,s as well as yellow beans, or mayocoba beans. This market is mainly a pinto bean market," says Patrick Wallesen Managing Partner at Weststar Food Company.
You may have seen these Weststar beans at local grocery stores like HEB, but the federal government is also using hundreds of thousands of dollars of your tax money to purchase these beans. Weststar Food Company estimates the USDA paid them $830,000 for its beans last year. That money not only paid for beans going to food banks in the United States, but also many of the bags are exported to foreign countries for US aid.
"You see your tax dollars at work, we hope that it goes for good and we think that it does. It seems like the food banks that we work with are well ran, well organized and are a real asset to the community," says Wallesen.
Federal government contracts only make up one sixth of Weststar Food Company's business. In fact, it says 2012 was one of the company's biggest years working with the federal government.
"The one thing is, is that it can fluctuate a lot. It is very competitive so it fluctuates year to year how much business we get with the USDA," says Wallesen.
Your tax money, used by the USDA, to fill hungry bellies.
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