The West Michigan Food Processing Association is very engaged in supporting the State of Michigan and others to help manage the response to the COVID-19 crisis.    With the food processing sector identified as an essential business, the Association has become not only a resource link to the many sources of information about the issue, but has also taken an active role such as working with the FARM (Food, Agriculture, Research, and Manufacturing incubator that is slated for completion by the end of 2020) team and other companies to develop the production process for manufacturing critically needed hand sanitizer.   In addition, the Association leadership helped organize a survey of food pantries and food banks to determine what their critical resource needs are during this crisis so that distributors can direct excess food productsfor the increasing need in communities that would normally be sold to restaurants and other institutional food organizations that are currently closed.