Tyson says nation’s pork production is down 50%, despite Trump’s order to keep meat plants open

President Trump’s executive order last week requiring meat processing plants to stay open to ward off shortages may not be a cure-all for the food industry segment that has been hardest hit by coronavirus outbreaks. On Monday morning, Tyson Foods said during an investor call that U.S. hog processing capacity had dropped by 50 percent. The company has been severely affected. Three of Tyson’s six main U.S. processing facilities remain closed, and three others are operating at reduced capacity, the company said. Steve Meyer, an economist for Kerns and Associates, an agricultural risk management firm, said Tyson’s production numbers may be even more dire. “By my calculations, last Friday, pork production was down 42.9 percent for all U.S. companies,” he said by phone Monday. “Tyson, by my calculations, was down by 57,780 hogs processed per day from a capacity of 78,500 processed per day. That’s 74 percent short.” Tyson closed its Columbus Junction, Iowa, plant on April 6 after recording 200 coronavirus infections and at least two employee deaths. (The facility is open now and running at three-quarters capacity, Meyer said.) Next, the company suspended operations at its Perry, Iowa, pork plant on April 20 for deep cleaning. The company slowed and then closed its largest pork plant, in Waterloo, Iowa, on April 22 after 182 cases of covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes, were linked to the facility. And a fourth pork plant, in Logansport, Ind., halted operations April 25 after nearly 900 employees, or 40 percent of the workforce, tested positive for the coronavirus. Although pork processing was most affected, the Tyson beef supply is also threatened, with sick workers forcing shutdowns. The Tyson Fresh Meats beef plant in Pasco, Wash., closed, and Tyson said last week it would temporarily suspend operations at its Dakota City, Neb., beef processing plant after a surge of hundreds of coronavirus cases linked to the facility. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, 115 meat and poultry processing facilities in 19 states had reported covid-19 cases as of Friday. Among approximately 130,000 workers at these facilities, 4,913 cases and 20 deaths have been recorded. Dermot Hayes, an economist at Iowa State University, said Tyson has been hit particularly hard for two reasons. It was hit first, so the spread has had longer to play out. And more recently, Tyson has been checking everyone at its plants and finding many workers testing positive for the virus. “At one in Missouri, they tested 2,000 workers and 350 workers were positive,” Hayes said. “None of them had symptoms.”...MORE