21st Annual Purina Cares Day Featured Food Pantry for People and Pets in Need

ST. LOUIS (May 24, 2022) – For more than 125 years, Purina has been giving back to pets and people in need. Recently, more than 1,200 St. Louis-based Purina employees took part in the company’s 21st annual Purina Cares Day – a workday devoted to community service.

To support neighbors struggling to put food on the table, Purina teamed up with the St. Louis Area Foodbank to host a drive-thru food pantry event where associates distributed a month’s worth of food and household items – including free bags of Purina dog and cat food – to more than 1,400 people in need. Due to recent inflation, the St. Louis Area Foodbank has experienced a 27 percent increase in need throughout its service area since March.

Other associates volunteered at Purina’s downtown campus, assembling personal care kits for area homeless and healthy snack packages for local youth this summer. Associates also made fleece blankets, built pet beds and assembled adoption kits for area pet shelters.

Hundreds of additional Purina associates traveled to nine different pet welfare and social service agencies across the St. Louis region to work alongside area nonprofits on landscaping, painting, cleaning and repair projects.

To close out the day, Purina Pro Plan presented retired St. Louis Blues Hockey Captain David Backes with a $100,000 donation to his charity Athletes for Animals, marking the successful completion of a recent partnership with Pro Plan’s Million Mile Challenge.

Purina Cares Day extended beyond its headquarters — more than 250 remote Purina associates as well as employees at 18 of Purina’s factories volunteered their time in support of nonprofit organizations in their local communities during the month of May.

“Purina Cares Day is one of the best days of the year,” said Kim Beardslee, Director of Community Affairs at Purina. “To be able to make an immediate impact in the lives of our neighbors and local pets is incredibly rewarding. In our 127th year, we are living the legacy created by of Purina’s founder, William H. Danforth, whose spirit of philanthropy and service is still ingrained in who we are today.”

Purina Cares Day is one of many ways Purina supports communities where its employees live and work. The company donates more than $30 million annually in financial and product donations to pet-related and community nonprofit organizations across the county.

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