Iowa Guard to aid meat-plant virus sweeps

Hundreds of National Guard personnel are being deployed in Iowa as coronavirus hits meat-processing plants in a state that accounts for about a third of U.S. pork supply.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said 250 National Guard members will help with testing and contact tracing for workers at plants operated by Tyson Foods Inc. and National Beef Packing Co.

Sending in guard soldiers is the latest attempt to contain the disease, which has forced a growing number of slaughterhouses and meatprocessing plants to slow or halt operations.

The disruptions are stoking concerns for eventual fresh-meat shortages in grocery stores as well leaving some farmers without a market for their animals. That’s pushing down prices for hogs and cattle, while making meat more expensive. Wholesale pork posted its biggest three-day gain in six years.

“At some point we’re going to have to be talking about euthanizing hogs, and we’re not that far from it,” Reynolds told reporters. “And that would be devastating, not only for the food supply but for the cost of food going forward.”

On Monday, JBS SA said it was closing a pork plant in Minnesota after seven workers at the plant tested positive for coronavirus and officials from the Minnesota Department of Health said Friday that number is expected to rise. The company didn’t give a date for reopening.

The JBS, the world’s top meat company, will wind down operations at its Worthington, Minn., facility over the next two days with a diminished staff to ensure existing product in the facility can be used to support the food supply, the company said Monday in a statement.

“As we all learn more about coronavirus, it is clear that the disease is far more widespread across the U.S. and in our county than official estimates indicate based on limited testing,” JBS President Bob Krebs said in a statement. “We have taken aggressive actions to keep coronavirus out of our plant and keep this critical infrastructure facility operational.”

The Minnesota shutdown is the latest blow to the nation’s meatpacking industry that’s struggling to contain the spread of coronavirus among its workers and spurring concerns of a shortfall in pork and beef at grocery stores. Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s biggest pork producer, indefinitely shut down a slaughter plant in South Dakota last week after hundreds of workers tested positive for covid-19. The plant typically accounted for 4% to 5% of total hog processing in the U.S.

Worker deaths have been reported at a Tyson Foods pork plant in Iowa, the company’s poultry plant in Georgia, and at a Cargill plant in Colorado.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Friday that workers from the Minnesota pork plant and a Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, could be transferring the virus between the two facilities as there are a lot of family members that work in both plants. JBS’s Worthington facility is tied for third in total U.S. hog slaughter capacity, based on Steiner Consulting data. The facility employs 2,000 people and processes 20,000 hogs per day, according to the company statement.

There are reports of other major hog, cattle and poultry processing plants dealing with cases of coronavirus among their workforce and whether they can continue to stay open will depend on the scale of the outbreak, according to a Monday livestock report from the CME Group. The disease is affecting the entire supply chain and as plants work at reduced capacity or are closed altogether, “this could result in less product available at the grocery store,” according to the report.