Farmers overrun with dead livestock during coronavirus pandemic aren’t sure what to do

Farmers are being forced to find new ways to get rid of their livestock after the coronavirus pandemic forced meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses to close because of outbreaks among workers.

Supply chains in the U.S. are being disrupted by a number of factors, including restaurant closures that have greatly impacted where livestock producers can sell their animals, the Detroit Free Press reported. The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that more than 20 meatpacking plants have closed during the pandemic, although President Trump issued an executive order last week demanding they remain open, according to The Guardian.

“I don’t see it having much effect,” Stephen Meyer, an economist at Kerns and Associates working with the pork industry, told CNN. “You can tell anybody to open up a plant, but if the workers don’t show up, it doesn’t work. It’s nice of the President to think we’re important and everything, but I don’t think it’s going to cause very many plants to open.”

So as the coronavirus lingers and plants remained shuttered, farmers overrun with livestock are struggling to unload — or in the worst case — dispose of their livestock.

Farmers have reportedly already euthanized at least 2 million animals that could not be processed, and that number is expected to rise, The Guardian reported. Poultry producers have turned to approved methods for “depopulating” chickens with slow suffocation by covering them with foam or turning off ventilation in barns, according to The Guardian.

Pig farmers are having an especially difficult time, as the timeline for slaughter is rigid, according to the Detroit Free Press. Pork producers in Iowa may be forced to euthanize as many as 10,000 hogs a day if meatpacking plants continue to limit the number of animals they can take, the Iowa Capital Dispatch says.

A pig is usually slaughtered at the age of six months, but without the outlet of processing plants, pigs ready for slaughter continue to grow and use farmers’ resources, the Free Press reported. Pigs can grow to be more than 350 pounds, making them too big to move through a slaughterhouse, according to the Free Press.

For that reason, pork producers are asking the federal government for compensation as they’re forced to euthanize their animals and dispose of them, CNN reported.

The Department of Natural Resources has rules allowing farmers to bury dead animals on their property, send them to a rendering plant or burn them in an engineered incinerator, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

Rendering plants are perhaps the most preferred method. It allows farm animals to be processed into ingredients for pet food, shampoo and biodiesel to name a few, E&E News reported. Industry experts argue rendering is an environmentally friendly and practical way to deal with a surplus of dead pigs, chickens and other livestock, compared to dumping them in a landfill or sending them to a composting facility, according to E&E News.

“Although there are multiple ways to safely dispose of depopulated livestock, rendering is the most sustainable solution as it prevents these animals from being wasted, or sent to a landfill,” Anna Wilkinson, director of communications for the North American Renderers Association, which represents big meatpackers, told E&E. “Rendering allows for the depopulated livestock to be used for new, rendered goods, such as biodiesel.”

Iowa is the top pork producing state in the U.S., according to the Globe Gazette. The Iowa Pork Producers Association has been discussing how landfills in the state might be able to help with the overflow of dead animals, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.

Some landfills won’t take carcasses but others say they will limit the number they can accept, John Foster, a leader in the Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations and administrator of the Black Hawk County Solid Waste Commission in Waterloo, told the Capital Dispatch. However, landfill operators believe farmers will likely consider burying animals on their properties before approaching a landfill, according to the Capital Dispatch.

This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 7:09 PM with the headline "Farmers overrun with dead livestock during coronavirus pandemic aren’t sure what to do."