Tyson plant stops production

More than 100 workers at Washington facility test positive for virus.

Tyson Foods Inc. said Thursday that it will stop production at a beef processing plant in Pasco, Wash., while workers are tested for the coronavirus. The plant has a daily slaughter capacity of 2,300 cattle.

State health officials said more than 100 of the plant’s workers have tested positive for the virus so far. More than 1,400 people work there. Local news outlets reported earlier this week of the plant’s possible closure.

This is the latest temporary closure from one of the nation’s largest meat producers related to the spread of the coronavirus. U.S. slaughterhouses, where workers are often positioned shoulder to shoulder, doing repetitive motions, have become hotbeds for the virus. Unions that represent most of the nation’s meatpacking workers said more than 5,000 have been infected or exposed to the virus.

“They are under a direct threat from this virus,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 250,000 meatpacking and food-processing workers. “In every state they’ve been deemed essential workers but they haven’t been given the protections they so desperately need.”

The international chapter on Thursday urged Vice President Mike Pence to step

up protections for workers at beef, chicken and pork plants, calling for more testing, access to masks and gloves and social distancing measures, among other changes such as an immediate halt on waivers that allow faster line production speeds.

While employers such as Tyson and JBS USA are providing daily temperature checks, allowing for social-distancing where possible and distributing protective equipment, not every plant is doing the same.

Acht Deng, who works at a Smithfield Foods pork plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., said she was sent home three days after the facility’s first case was found on March 25. A few weeks later she tested positive for the virus.

“I was devastated,” Deng said. One of her three children

contracted the virus from her. Nearly 800 workers at Sioux Falls have tested positive thus far, The Associated Press reported. Company officials have said the outbreak’s severity can be linked to immigrant workers. Deng said “to me that’s ridiculous.”

“A lot of people are blaming the company, but I’m trying to stay positive,” she said. The plant in Sioux Falls remains closed, among others. Tyson said Wednesday that it was indefinitely closing its largest pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa, which employs 2,800 workers. According to the National Pork Board, the Tyson plant has a slaughter capacity of 19,500 hogs a day.

Steve Stouffer, Tyson’s beef and pork president, said in a statement that the temporary closures mean reduced U.S. food supplies, which “present problems to farmers who

have no place to take their livestock.”

With restaurants and other food-service businesses closed or partially shut down, essentially half of the nation’s food has nowhere to go, according to economists. In turn, conventional farmers are letting produce rot, destroying eggs and dumping milk.

“It’s a complicated situation across the supply chain,” Stouffer said.

About 13 meatpacking plants have closed in the past two months, resulting in a 25% reduction in pork slaughter capacity and a 10% reduction in beef slaughter capacity, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Thousands of union workers have been infected and 10 have died.

Tyson plans to work with health officials before reopening the plants and allow time for the

workers to test for the virus and get results back. Workers will be compensated while the plants are closed, Tyson said.

A Tyson pork plant in Logansport, Ind., with a slaughter capacity of 15,400 hogs per day, also is closing while workers are tested. Cass County health officials told the Indianapolis Star that 146 have tested positive for the virus so far.

About 95 workers who live in Benton and Franklin counties in Washington have tested positive for the virus, health officials reported Thursday.

The rest of the Springdale company’s meat and poultry plants are operating, with some at reduced levels for worker safety reasons or absenteeism. There are 21 plants in Arkansas, according to Tyson’s directory. Arkansas health officials said Thursday that they are not aware of any outbreaks but are monitoring the situation.