[Letter to the Editor]

Editor’s Note: In the winter 2006/2007 issue of QA magazine, we ran a cover profile article of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky and its culture of safety. Intrinsic to the plant’s safety program was the husband-and-wife team of Plant Manager Allen Dunlavy and Food Safety Program Director Rebecca Dunlavy, both of whom were featured in the article. Sadly, in the time between the plant visit and publication of the issue, Rebecca and her five-week-old son were killed in a car accident. To relay the tragic news and extend our thoughts and prayers to Allen and family, the issue also contained an Editor’s Note, to which we recently received a reply from Allen.

With his permission, we are printing Allen’s letter as an update for all those who knew Rebecca and Allen, contacted him in sympathy, or were otherwise touched by the note. We continue to extend our prayers to Allen and family and wish them all continued healing.

I realize this is rather late, but I was going through some items the other day and came across your magazine, the article about Jack Link’s with Rebecca’s and my safety program story in it. I was always going to write you and say thank you for the note, it touched many people that contacted me that otherwise would not have, or had the knowledge of the accident. I have it tucked away to show my four year-old daughter that survived the accident with me.

It has been over a year now and it still seems like it was yesterday, but I have moved on with my life and am doing fine, Abby is doing good, also. We left Jack Link’s though. It was tough to come to work each day and walk into that plant, and I realized that I would not heal anytime soon, along with going home to a nice new four-bedroom home that I built Rebecca as a promise I made to her when we got married.

So I gave notice and we left and went to Abbyland Foods in Abbotsford, Wis. It was a tough move but in the end, it worked, we have healed and continue to heal daily and we are both doing really good. Jack Link and I stay in touch weekly and someday maybe I will return. He was very sad to see us go, for he was very close to my daughter as well. They went everywhere together. If I did not have a babysitter, he would go pick her up and take off work so I could work and he would pick her up from daycare for me and they would go have ice cream or to the park, or he would just bring her back to work with him and have her color on his desk or somewhere. It was so neat. But life has got to move on and even he knew it was hard for us there.

You have two choices when something like this happens: You can sit around and feel sorry for yourself, which I have never done even for a day in my life, or you can pick up your boot straps and get going and that is what we did. It was the right thing at the right time.

Allen Dunlavy
Former Plant Manager
Jack Link’s Beef Jerky