[image_credit]JBS[/image_credit][image_caption]JBS pork processing plant in Worthington.[/image_caption]
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit][image_caption]Rep. Collin Peterson[/image_caption]
The plant was shuttered last week after 26 employees tested positive for COVID-19, and is just one in a string of large pork processing facilities to close around the country because of coronavirus outbreaks. Now 239 workers at the JBS plant have tested positive for COVID-19, and there have been 615 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in Worthington’s Nobles County. That’s the second-most of any Minnesota county in behind Hennepin, though state health leaders say that’s due in part to testing more people in Nobles than elsewhere.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he would order meatpacking plants to continue operations. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue told Peterson he’d like to see JBS open within two or three days, Peterson said Wednesday.
Peterson called that “ambitious” and said the plant can only operate when workers are safe and feel they can return to the plant without getting sick. He predicted the plant would operate with fewer people, at least at first, so employees are spaced out and not working “shoulder to shoulder.” Perdue, Peterson said, has promised not to force open the plant if it’s not safe for workers.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Walker Orenstein[/image_credit][image_caption]Rep. Jim Hagedorn[/image_caption]
The plant shutdowns have thrown hog farmers into limbo, with many facing the prospect of euthanizing hundreds of thousands of pigs and losing vast sums of money. Peterson also said the country is about “three weeks away from not having pork on the shelves in the grocery stores.”
Even if JBS opens soon, Peterson said it would have limited capacity at first, relieving some, if not all, of the backup. JBS is not the only meatpacking facility in the state to be disrupted. Jennie-O closed turkey plants in Willmar recently after workers tested positive. A massive Smithfield Foods pork plant in nearby Sioux Falls, South Dakota and a Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, Iowa, have also been idled.
Peterson said he will try and pass through Congress a measure that would allow federal agriculture authorities to help pay farmers who must euthanize animals because slaughterhouses are closed. At the moment, the feds can step in when animals are diseased, but not when they are healthy, Peterson said.
JBS did open its facility Wednesday, but only to slaughter and dispose of hogs, not process and pack the meat. The company estimates it could euthanize about 13,000 hogs per day using about 10 to 20 employees. Normally the facility has more than 2,000 employees and processes 20,000 hogs per day.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Greta Kaul[/image_credit][image_caption]Gov. Tim Walz[/image_caption]
Yet not all Minnesotans agree a quick restart of the factory is the right decision. The politicians were nearly drowned out at one point by those in nearby cars honking their horns to show they want the plant to remain closed.
Matt Utecht, president of the Local 663 branch of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents most employees at the JBS plant, said the facility management must “install the highest possible worker safety and testing standards when they reopen.” That includes, he said, daily worker testing and temperature checks, access to personal protective equipment, and safe production line speeds to ensure social distancing.
“Our food supply will remain at risk until every worker who makes pork and other proteins can go to work without facing an increased chance of contracting COVID-19,” Utecht said in a written statement.
Walz said it’s possible to open the facility safely, especially with the help of a new increase in testing capabilities announced by the state last week. More tests should help control the spread of COVID-19 by identifying and isolating the sick or exposed, Walz said.
“It needs to run and it needs to run safely,” Walz said of the JBS plant. “It does us no good to open it back up again and in two weeks have 500 more people (infected). Where are we going to keep getting the workers?”
What can possibly go wrong with a Presidential War Powers Directive ordering meat packers to go back to work while simultaneously waiving any product liability concerns for the manufacturers? So what if the employees are given the “choice” of losing their unemployment benefits or working in an environment so dangerous as to be deadly? Do they get Workers Compensation when they fall ill (thus shifting that cost to the states)? GI Bill benefits or life insurance? Citizenship for themselves? For their surviving family members if they die? Suppose they’re already citizens – which most of them are? What do we give them in exchange for this deadly demand from an incompetent braggart with nothing better to do than look like he knows what he’s doing, just like on that “reality” tv show from years ago?
Hagedorn, have you visited yet? I assume you will soon, to show how safe it is. Perhaps today.
Do you believe this Brazilian company is a safe place to work? Can’t wait for your visit.
Every large employer needs to test each employee every shift and get rapid results. The worker without symptoms who is carrying the virus is the most contagious when they don’t even know they’re sick.
After daily testing, contact tracing and 14 day quarantines need to be implemented on positives.
HOWEVER, many USDA inspectors have fallen sick and they have been moved from one plant to another to cover for those out sick (likely while they were asymptomatic, spreading the virus). Further complicating the workers plight is the fact that the plants are close enough that workers and their families are cross-exposed– domino effects on the plants. Smithfield is less than an hour’s drive from JBS Worthington.
Positive tested plant workers need a place to isolate, despite families and kids living in close quarters.
It may not become an issue, but these packing plants are set up for a specific animal size and conformation. Over-sized hogs will be docked in price, and of course the farmer has already paid for the feed that grew them. Finishing barns need to be emptied and sanitized to receive the next batch from the nurseries.
This is complicated. Deciding to not go back to work can’t be easy either. Euthanizing is devastating in many ways to the farmers and workers who raised them.
Workplace safety and wage and benefits please. Just East on I90 Hormel broke their P9 Union, Hormel and other meat packers then recruited non citizens sending empty busses South to return full. This is the truth JBS must address, JBS can not be trusted. Gov. Rudy Perpich had to call out the National Guard. I hope Labor can stand together for living wages and benefits.
You mean to tell me the flu virus went through a workplace? Oh my, that is a shocker! How many of those workers died? How many were totally a-symptomatic? How many had mild symptoms?
It is perfectly clear today (don’t need more testing to prove it) that unless you are over 65 (average death from COVID 19 is 86+) or have multiple underlying health issues, your chances of dying from Coronavirus is next to nothing. Do they close down workplaces for the flu? How about schools? How about a country? I thought we were using science to craft a path forward? We are using fear and fear mongering to scare folks who don’t take time to look at the simple facts of COVID 19 versus normal flu season. FYI, look to Hong Kong flu season in late 60’s and compare who died and national response to it.
Dr. Smith I presume? You don’t have to be an expert to listen to them. I think your attitude is selfish.
I do know the processing plants are designed for efficiency. Non work areas are confining, small, employees on top of each other. These places cost not make money so maintaining distance will probably require big changes, co$tly changes and retraining.
This plant is foreign owned? MAGA?