WASINGTON, D.C. – Case Farms’ Tom Shelton was elected Wednesday to be an Honorary Lifetime Member of the NCC Board of Directors at the NCC Fall Board meeting in Washington, D.C. Tom served as NCC Chairman in 2004 and 2005, and he has invaluably served on the NCC Board for more than three decades representing Case Farms.
Mr. Shelton is Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and its subsidiaries. He has been a director of the Company since 1990. Mr. Shelton has more than 61 years of experience in the poultry industry, having joined Perdue in 1964 after graduating from North Carolina State University. While at Perdue, Mr. Shelton obtained broad experience in positions of increasing responsibility. In 1978, he became Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Poultry Products Division that comprised a significant majority of Perdue’s business. He became its Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in 1982 and was elected to Perdue’s Board of Directors. The following year, Mr. Shelton was named President.
In 1986, Mr. Shelton resigned as President of Perdue to pursue his goal of building his own company. In 1986, Mr. Shelton acquired the Ohio Division, which later became the first subsidiary of the Company. Thereafter, under Mr. Shelton’s direction, the Company acquired four other poultry companies.
Mr. Shelton is the founder of the Company and serves as its Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mr. Shelton also served on the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond for six years, and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.
He joins a list of broiler industry icons as NCC Honorary Lifetime Members: Willard Adcox, 1981; Russell T. Clark, 1981; Roy Herider, 1981; E.S. (Izzy) Kendrick, 1982; Donald Corbett, 1985; Henry Saglio, 1985; Edward Covell, 1987; Jess C. Merkle, 1987; HF (Mac) McCarty, Jr, 1988; George Matthews, 1989; Joe Frank Sanderson, 1990; Collier Wenderoth, Jr, 1995; Leland Tollett, 1999; James T. Hudson, 1999; Joe S. Hatfield, 2001; Tam Etheridge, 2004; Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim, 2007; Ronnie Cameron, 2008; Charles C. Allen III, 2012; Mike Welch, 2017; Joe Sanderson, Jr, 2024; Tom Shelton, 2025.
