Neese’s Country Sausage is returning to NC grocery stores, months after vanishing
After a long absence, Neese’s Country Sausage is on its way back — and products are hitting grocery store shelves soon.
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“Beginning this month, shoppers can once again find three long-awaited Neese’s products in more than 500 Food Lion locations across North Carolina and Virginia, before rolling out chain wide at Food Lion later this fall,” read an email to CharlotteFive from a Food Lion representative.
The packaging for Neese’s Regular Country Sausage, Hot Country Sausage and Extra Sage Country Sausage will all have a new look, but the recipes will remain the same, the message noted.
Earlier this year, Raleigh-based White Packing, which makes Jesse Jones hot dogs, bologna and smoked sausage, took over family-owned Neese’s Country Sausage after months of bare shelves and complaints from home cooks and restaurant customers alike.
The products have not yet arrived, a customer service representative at Salisbury-based Food Lion told CharlotteFive on Tuesday afternoon.
But customers can expect more Neese’s items to return to Food Lion shelves in the future, the email said. Whether that includes Neese’s livermush and liver pudding is unclear, as CharlotteFive questions about the products weren’t immediately answered.
In early December, Charlotte-area fans of Neese’s who grew up with the sausage and livermush noticed they were impossible to find. Restaurants that had gotten regular deliveries from its Charlotte facility to feed hungry breakfast customers had also run dry.
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It turns out, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service had partially shuttered the production lines at the company’s Greensboro facility back in September.
A federal Freedom of Information Act request filed by CharlotteFive found that Neese’s Country Sausage’s Greensboro facility received positive tests for listeria on Sept. 3, 2025, in multiple locations, according to a USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service letter.
Listeria monocytogenes is a rare but serious foodborne bacteria. It’s a public health concern, especially for high-risk populations including pregnant women, newborns, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.
In the weeks and months that followed, a partial production shutdown eventually became a larger shutdown. Phones rang unanswered, and the plant was marked “temporarily closed” on Google.
In June, White Packing-owned Jesse Jones announced the Neese’s brand acquisition.
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This story was originally published August 4, 2026 at 2:00 PM.
