Employees infected. Animals stuck. COVID-19 causes turmoil in Kentucky meat industry
The coronavirus has begun to grip Kentucky’s meat processing plants, as more than 200 employees at meatpacking facilities across the state have tested positive for COVID-19, according to multiple reports.
A large number of those cases came from two Western Kentucky plants — Tyson Foods in Henderson County, and Perdue Farms in Ohio County, according to multiple reports.
The Tyson Foods plant will shut down production from Thursday through Sunday to clean and sanitize the facility, according to Ron Chapman, who oversees the facility.
“As a food production company, we follow Good Manufacturing Practices including those relating to sanitation and disinfection of our facilities,” Chapman said in a statement released by Henderson County. “While we’ve intensified cleaning and sanitation already, we’re committed to do all we can to keep team members safe including suspending a day of production for additional cleaning.”
Health officials in the area had been working closely with their state and federal counterparts to assess conditions at Tyson and other meat plants in the region, the Henderson County government said on Facebook Friday.
Kentucky has at least 26 USDA-inspected meat processors, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
Fearing that meat processing plants across the country may shut down over the health concerns, President Donald Trump ordered them to remain open Tuesday. He invoked the Defense Production Act to keep them from shutting down.
“It is important that processors of beef, pork, and poultry (“meat and poultry”) in the food supply chain continue operating and fulfilling orders to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans,” the order stated, according to Politico.
John Tyson, the chairman of the board at Tyson Foods, said in a full-page ad in The Washington Post Monday that “the food supply chain is breaking,” and plant closures are leading to food shortages.
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner sent a letter to Gov. Andy Beshear on April 22 calling for him to designate workers at food processing plants as frontline workers. The letter was cosigned by Bob Blair, the president of United Food Commercial Workers Local 227, which represents workers in Kentucky and Southern Indian.
This designation would allow for increased access to testing as it becomes available, better access to personal protective equipment as it becomes available, and an extension of child care service benefits, Quarles said.
“The work of our farmers and our workers has not halted during this pandemic, and in fact, they are needed now more than ever,” Quarles said in the letter.
The Kentucky Beef Council said in a statement Wednesday that it expects to see “reductions in availability of specific beef cuts at some point in the future.”
“With any supply chain, if there is a disruption, we can expect to see impacts in the supply of the finished product,” the council said.
While meat processing plants are facing health concerns and production shortfalls, farmers are left to figure out what to do with animals stuck at farms with nowhere to take them. There have been reports of farmers euthanizing livestock because they’ve been backlogged with animals.
Sean Southard, director of communications for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, said he hasn’t heard of any “depopulating” happening in Kentucky yet, but that “it could happen given the slowdowns we are seeing.”
Worker safety advocates in Kentucky and other areas of the Ohio Valley region have been pushing for plant owners to implement more coronavirus safety precautions for employees.
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 1:18 PM.