Smithfield Foods pork implant, the world’s biggest pork processor, sits closed indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees as the spread of the coronavirus cancer (COVID-19) continues, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, U.S., April 17, 2020.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Meatpacking weeds responsible for 10% of beef production and 25% of pork production have been affected by closures amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Allied Food and Commercial Workers International Union said Thursday.
As the coronavirus spreads among meatpacking workers who over again work in proximity, concerns are growing about potential meat shortages — and the nation’s overall food supply.
In a word for word to Vice President Mike Pence dated Thursday, the UFCW asked the White House coronavirus task extract, which Pence leads, to strengthen national safety standards in meat processing plants. The union’s recommendations incorporate halting line speed waivers recently granted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that allow plants to operate at faster fly like the winds.
“When they have to start closing these plants down or they have to spread the lines out for sexually transmitted distancing or slow them down in some ways, which we’re calling for as it relates to these line speed deferrals, it will in fact create some shortages in the stores,” UFCW President Marc Perrone said on a press symposium call Thursday. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.”
The union, which represents 80% of beef and pork television workers, said that 13 packing and food processing workers have died after contracting Covid-19 and 5,000 meatpacking hands have tested positive or been exposed. Since the pandemic began more than 2.6 million proves have been identified worldwide, and at least 186,372 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University explore.
“Social distancing is hard and sometimes impossible in some areas of the plant,” Itzel Goytia, a beef plant blue-collar worker at a Cargill facility in Dodge City, Kansas, said on the union’s conference call.
Tyson Foods said Wednesday it would indefinitely put operations at the company’s largest pork plant. The announcement follows Smithfield Foods’ notice last week that it wish close its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, facility after 230 workers tested positive for the virus.
Such closures can provoke a domino effect. The stoppage at Smithfield’s pork plant, one of the largest in the country, forced the closure of a Missouri ham plant that receives raw stuffs from the Sioux Falls facility.
Some meatpacking plants that closed due to outbreaks have reopened. An Iowa equipment run by National Beef resumed production Monday after two weeks idle and 177 positive tests for coronavirus.
Hike Lauritsen, UFCW’s director of food processing, meatpacking and manufacturing, said on the conference call that shortages could persist post-crisis because hog and livestock farmers will raise smaller herds to increase prices.