Neese’s Country Sausage remains shut down in Greensboro

Raleigh-based Jesse Jones LLC acquired Neese’s Country Sausage on June 19, 2026, after months of uncertainty around a Greensboro plant that had been shut down and had left restaurants and grocery stores with limited supplies of the familiar sausage and livermush.

For Guilford County, the disruption landed on a brand with deep local roots. NCpedia traces Neese’s back to 1917, when J.T. Neese began selling sausage in Greensboro and the business grew from wagon sales into a longstanding North Carolina food name. Neese’s own website still presented the company as a Greensboro brand, with pages for products, recipes, where to buy, shopping and careers, even as the plant remained caught in a regulatory dispute.

The trouble began well before the spring shutdown. FOX8 reported that a notice of suspension had been issued in September 2025 for a “specific portion” of production tied to “ready-to-eat processes.” A Charlotte Observer and CharlotteFive report said USDA testing first detected listeria at the facility on Sept. 8, 2024. Those issues set the stage for the later halt in output.

By May 10, WRAL said Neese’s Country Sausage in Greensboro had been shut down and would pause operations. The USDA cited health violations and a lack of USDA inspectors in connection with the shutdown, and FOX8 reported that the facility had not requested FSIS inspectors. That left the company unable to move forward under normal inspection conditions, a problem that had direct consequences for a food plant built around regulated meat processing.

The confusion also spread beyond the loading dock. WFMY News 2 said Google listings suggested the business was permanently closed, even while reporters observed activity at the Greensboro plant. Meanwhile, 2026 reporting said some restaurants and grocery stores were already seeing limited supplies of Neese’s products, showing how quickly a production pause at a heritage brand can ripple through retail counters and breakfast menus across the Triad.

After the acquisition, Charlotte Observer, CharlotteFive and FOX8 said Jesse Jones LLC intended to restore production and return Neese’s products to store shelves and restaurant kitchens. That gave the Greensboro brand a possible path back, but the reopening depended on clearing the regulatory and operational problems that had kept ready-to-eat production offline.