Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork producer, is closing a major U.S. plant indefinitely after several employees tested positive for the coronavirus. The move pushes the country “perilously close to the edge” of a meat shortage, the company said in its Sunday statement, which announced the closure of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota facility.
“The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,” Kenneth M. Sullivan, president and chief executive officer, said. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers. These farmers have nowhere to send their animals.”
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“Unfortunately, COVID-19 cases are now ubiquitous across our country. The virus is afflicting communities everywhere,” Sullivan continued. “The agriculture and food sectors have not been immune. Numerous plants across the country have COVID-19 positive employees. We have continued to run our facilities for one reason: to sustain our nation’s food supply during this pandemic. We believe it is our obligation to help feed the country, now more than ever. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Saturday that 238 Smithfield employees had active cases of the new coronavirus, accounting for 55% of the state’s total. Noem and the mayor of Sioux Falls had recommended the company shut down the plant for at least two weeks.
Smithfield had previously announced that the Sioux Falls facility would shutter its doors for just three days, during which time essential personnel would “repeat the rigorous deep cleaning and sanitization” that had been an ongoing process. At the time, the company explained that it would “install additional physical barriers to further enhance social distancing.”
In its Sunday announcement, however, the company said that it would begin a full shutdown. Some operations were anticipated to carry into Tuesday of this week as the facility worked to “process product in inventory, consisting of millions of servings of protein.” The facility, which represents four to five percent of U.S. pork production and supplies 130 million servings of food per week, will resume operations “once further direction is received from local, state and federal officials.” Employees will continue to be compensated over the next two weeks in an effort “to keep them from joining the ranks of the tens of millions of unemployed Americans across the country.”
