Meat plants set to reopen in a matter of days
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he expects meat packing plants to reopen in “days not weeks” under President Donald Trump’s executive order invoking the Defense Production Act.
Slaughterhouse workers should begin receiving more protective gear and access to coronavirus testing “virtually immediately,” Perdue said Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has “already begun” working on orders to get them filled on a priority basis by vendors, he said.
The USDA has been tapped to take the lead in assuring meat-processing facilities stay open under the executive order issued Tuesday.
The nation’s food-supply chain has fallen apart as a wave of outbreaks shutters slaughterhouses across the U.S., heightening the prospect that pork, beef and chicken may go missing from the shelves at grocery stores.
Perdue said he expect the national shortfall in meat production, which he estimates currently is 20 percent to 30 percent, to be narrowed to “10 percent to 15 percent within a week to 10 days.”
In many cases, even as plants reopen, they won’t be operating at the same capacity because of safety measures to control the spread of virus, Perdue said.
“There will be some less production, some inefficiency based on line speeds, some employees that will not be able to come back to work,” Perdue said.
The USDA will have the legal power to force meat producers to reopen slaughterhouses under the Trump order but doesn’t anticipate using it, Perdue said.
The department will work collaboratively with companies and state and local officials to set safety standards based on guidelines for workers that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Occupational Safety and Health Administration released, he said.
“Worker health and safety is the first priority here,” Perdue said. “We want to assure the workers and the community of their safety.”
The world’s largest pork producer told a judge in Missouri on Thursday that it is working as quickly as it can to comply with federal safety guidelines but that it needs some flexibility in an industry where people typically work side by side.
The comments from a lawyer for Smithfield Foods came as a judge weighed whether to issue a mandatory injunction requiring a rural Missouri meat plant to abide by federal guidelines.
The lawsuit, filed by a worker identified only as Jane Doe, accuses the Virginia-based company of not doing enough to protect workers.
Trump’s executive order doesn’t won’t remove legal liability from meat companies for coronavirus safety lawsuits, but along with the CDC guidelines will give them “a defensible answer” should they be sued as long as they follow the guidance, Perdue said.
About a dozen plants have shut this month because of outbreaks among employees jammed together on processing lines. The closures have prompted farmers to start culling hogs that have nowhere to go for pork processing.
One day after Trump’s order, another slaughterhouse shut down. Tyson Foods Inc., the biggest U.S. meat processor, said it was closing a massive beef processing plant in Nebraska for deep cleaning after hundreds of people in surrounding communities tested positive for the virus.
Tyson Foods’ decision to suspend operations at its Dakota City, Neb., beef plant followed a surge of coronavirus cases in the area, including in nearby Sioux City, Iowa.
Tyson previously disclosed that some of the 4,300 workers at the plant had tested positive for the virus, but it has not said how many. The Arkansasbased company said it was screening Dakota City employees for the virus this week with the help of the Nebraska National Guard.
In Kansas, four counties with packing plants — Seward, Ford, Finney and Lyon — are in the top five of the state’s 105 counties in terms of number of confirmed coronavirus cases per capita.
Twenty workers from meatpacking and food-processing plants have died, and at least 6,500 have been directly affected by the coronavirus, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the largest private sector union.
Trump said Wednesday that his administration is preparing a report on how to protect workers.
The USDA said it will ask meat processors to submit written plans to safely operate packing plants and review them in consultation with local officials.
Meanwhile, nearly 400 workers in Georgia’s prized poultry industry have tested positive for the coronavirus, and one has died from his illness, Georgia Department of Public Health statistics show.
The 388 workers who have been sickened by COVID-19 represent about 2 percent of the estimated 16,500 people employed at 14 chicken processing plants across the state.
“The biggest challenge for these employees is the community widespread transmission in the areas where they live, the lack of education about COVID-19, and reluctance to change behaviors,” Georgia Public Health spokeswoman Nancy Nydam said, adding that her agency has received many anecdotal reports of people attending large social gatherings, house parties and religious services.
“Also, most live in multigenerational homes with large numbers of family members (12-14 persons),” she said. “They have no place to self-isolate if they are sick with COVID-19 and the whole family ends up getting sick.”