Trump signs order to keep meat processing going

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order declaring meat-processing plants critical infrastructure to ensure that the facilities remain open and to prevent looming shortages of pork, chicken and other products.

The coronavirus pandemic has battered the nation’s food production system in recent weeks. With restaurants, schools and several meat-processing plants closed, the supply chain is disrupted and farmers are taking steep losses.

“There is plenty of supply, it’s the distribution” that’s problematic, Trump said Tuesday at a White House meeting. Some of the largest meatpackers modified their production to handle more grocery orders when the pandemic started spreading. Since then they have closed some processing plants because workers have contracted the virus.

A White House spokesman said the administration took two actions on Tuesday. It used the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, to mandate that critical food supply operations stay open. And it issued guidance from the Department of Labor that would provide additional liability protections for companies seeking to operate in face of outbreak risks.

“The food supply chain is vulnerable,” Tyson Foods Chairman John Tyson said in a letter published over the weekend in several news outlets, including the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “As pork, beef and chicken plants are

being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.”

In the letter, Tyson urged government bodies to keep production plants open as workers staffing some of America’s largest meat facilities test positive for the virus. Tyson also listed the steps the company has taken to protect its workers in recent weeks.

“We’re working with Tyson,” Trump said at an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when asked about the nation’s food supply. “We’re going to sign an executive order … and that will solve any liability problems.”

The five-page order, which was developed in consultation with industry leaders, is designed, in part, to provide companies with additional liability protections in case workers get sick.

Trump on Tuesday described the issue as a “legal roadblock.” The order, he said, would “solve any liability problems where they had certain liability problems and we’ll be in very good shape.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., had written a letter to Trump asking him to use the Defense Production Act to declare the food supply industry as essential, warning that consumers would face a meat shortage in a matter of days.

News of the decision by Trump sparked a response from some state officials and unions who want production plants to remain closed for safety reasons. Slaughterhouse workers, who often stand shoulder to shoulder doing repetitive jobs, are scared of contracting the virus despite social-distancing and deep-cleaning measures that employers have taken.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and National Pork Producers Council are pleading for more federal financial assistance for farmers and ranchers as the pandemic wrecks the market value of their animals. According to the advocacy groups, cattle ranchers are facing more than $13 billion in losses as pig producers lose $37 a head, or $5 billion in total, during this crisis.

“Millions of animals — chickens, pigs and cattle — will be depopulated because of the closure of our processing plants,” Tyson said in his letter. He also emphasized the importance of worker safety, saying “we must do everything we can to prevent [workers’] exposure to the virus” inside and outside the plants.

At least 5,000 meatpacking and food-processing workers have fallen ill from the virus and 20 have died because of it, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents more than 250,000 chicken, beef and pork plant workers.

Hundreds of workers at a Smithfield Foods pork plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., and a Tyson Foods pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa, are diagnosed virus victims. The two plants are indefinitely closed.

Black Hawk County, where the Waterloo plant is, leads the state with 1,346 cases and 11 deaths reported on Monday. There were 356 reported cases a week ago.

“We should not be sitting where we sit today,” Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony

Thompson said in a briefing this week. Health officials reported more than 90% of the county’s cases are connected to Tyson’s largest pork plant.

“I hear corporate Tyson talking about how this community covid spread is impacting their operations and it makes me want to jump out of my chair to say ‘their operations has negatively impacted the covid spread in my community,’” Thompson said Monday.

Along with the Waterloo plant, Tyson said it would close two other meat plants last week for deep cleanings and to allow time for workers to get adequate testing. At least 22 slaughterhouses have closed at some point in the past two months because of the virus, according to a meatpacking union.

In response to Trump’s executive order, Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said when plants shut down it’s to save workers’ lives.

“If the administration had developed meaningful safety requirements early on … this would not even have become an issue,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “Employers and government must do better.”

The Labor Department issued safety guidelines for meatpacking workers and employers on Sunday, about two months after the virus took hold in America. The government’s recommendations are essentially what Tyson, JBS USA and other companies have been doing to keep workers safe.

“Our top priority remains the safety of our team members and plant communities,” Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said in an email. He declined to comment on the president’s order without first seeing it.

Tyson Foods shares climbed $3.12, or 5.2%, to close Tuesday at $62.80 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Information for this article was contributed by Jill Colvin of The Associated Press and by Ana Swanson and David Yaffe-Bellany of The New York Times.

The five-page order, which was developed in consultation with industry leaders, is designed, in part, to provide companies with additional liability protections in case workers get sick.