Large-scale poultry producers like Tyson, Perdue, Koch Foods, and JBS/Pilgrim’s Pride rely on thousands of workers to staff their facilities on a daily basis. The ongoing pandemic truly highlights the dangers of relying on this type of system as the sole method for producing meat and other food products.

Smithfield foods, one of the largest meat companies in the world, is closing its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, processing facility indefinitely in response to a rising number of confirmed COVID-19 cases among workers and the danger of further spreading the virus, according to CNN Business. During a news briefing about the closure, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said that the 240 employees who tested positive for the virus comprised over half of the active COVID-19 cases in the state. Processors in Iowa and Pennsylvania have also closed operations due to infected workers.

A worker at a Tyson Foods plant in Georgia also died recently after contracting the virus. According to reports, the worker was told to come back to work even after reporting that she had a fever. 

This is not the first incidence of a meat plant closure due to COVID-19. JBS USA announced Monday that it is closing its Greeley, Colorado, beef processing plant while National Beef Packing Co. closed its Tama, Iowa, facility. Both plants have a combined harvest capacity of 6,500 head of cattle per day.

Tyson closed a Columbus Junction, Iowa pork plant after over 24 employees tested positive for COVID-19. JBS closed a beef processing plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania for two weeks. Sanderson Farms also reported 15 employees testing positive for COVID-19 at a Georgia plant resulting in 400 workers being sent home.

The closures will undoubtedly cause major disruption in the food supply chain including shortages of meat.

Although major food companies are trying to keep food on grocery store shelves, doing so puts workers and consumers at risk and will only worsen the spread of COVID-19. Large-scale poultry producers like Tyson, Perdue, Koch Foods, and JBS/Pilgrim’s Pride rely on thousands of workers to staff their facilities on a daily basis. The ongoing pandemic truly highlights the dangers of relying on this type of system as the sole method for producing meat and other food products. In these plants, employees often work shoulder to shoulder performing tedious and physically demanding tasks like deboning chicken as birds pass through at a rate of 80 chickens per minute.

As each product leaves the factory, it will pass through many more hands before it winds up on the consumer’s table. Every single person involved in touching a contaminated product becomes a vector for other individuals in his or her life, from friends to family to community members.

To give a sense of the scale of the poultry supply chain that companies are trying to maintain during the pandemic, the National Chicken Council predicts that each American will consume an average of 100.5 pounds of poultry this year, up from 96.2 pounds in 2019. As demand for poultry increases, companies put more pressure on supply chains to produce more poultry products while maintaining the same margins. The current pandemic highlights the dangers of relying on a widespread, industrialized food system to feed people.

Are meat companies doing enough to protect workers and the public?

Plant workers are struggling to cope with production demands and personal safety concerns. Tensions are rising between companies and the workforces upon which they rely as workers demand better health precautions, paid sick leave, and additional support from their employers to cope with the impact of COVID-19. Recently, over 50 employees at Perdue Farms’ Kathleen, Georgia, processing plant walked off the job over concerns about their working conditions and compensation. Workers indicated that they did not feel safe on-site and that Perdue was not taking enough precautions to clean the facility.

Workers at its Greeley, Colorado, plant have accused the company of not implementing sufficient policies to achieve social distancing and adequate hygiene. The local county health department has initiated an investigation. Tyson responded to early allegations from employees that coworkers were testing positive by stating that it is “taking measures” to protect workers like restricting visitor access at the plants and taking employee temperatures before they enter the facility.

Some groups have criticized Tyson as not doing enough to protect its workers such as providing personal protective equipment and providing pay to workers placed under quarantine. In response to the pandemic, Tyson has so far committed $60 million in bonuses for what it describes as its frontline workers, providing eligible team members with a $500 bonus payable during the first week of July. It also committed $13 million to support critical needs in communities where it operates. 

Still, questions loom regarding whether this is enough of a relief response for a company that reports over $40 billion in revenue each year. Tyson is reportedly asking the federal government for more protective gear and looking for face coverings for employees.

Decentralized food production offers greater food security and resiliency

As consumers struggle to find a variety of food products at the supermarket, local farmers are stepping up to address the industrial food chain’s shortcomings. For some consumers, this is their first foray into shopping local and working directly with farmers to fill the refrigerators and pantries.

“There’s a whole community of farmers who are willing and able to supply meat to consumers. If you look at the current food system, you see a lot of holes in fulfillment or the limitations consumers are facing getting to the store,” Mike Badger, president of the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, told Sacred Cow. APPPA is a member-based trade group that advocates for pastured poultry farmers and consumers. “The message from all our members is that right now consumers are turning to local food for a variety of reasons including supermarket shortages, cooking at home more, and thinking more carefully about their nutrition.”

APPPA recently released the second installment of its newly-launched Healthier Way Forward campaign highlighting the nutritional differences between eggs produced in a mobile pastured poultry system versus eggs from chickens raised in a conventional confinement system.

Healthier Way Forward features the stories of farmers from across the United States, including Matt Cadman of Shady Grove Ranch in Texas. In the latest Healthier Way Forward video, Matt discusses his personal battle with ulcerative colitis and how he was taking $700 worth of medications a month. By changing his diet, he eventually weaned himself off medication.

“The reality is that many of us just don’t find value in our food anymore because the mainstream agriculture system has taught us that food should be cheaper, bigger, and faster. One of the things we hope to see come from the pandemic is that a large percentage of the people turning to local farmers will stick with them and realize that it’s not as hard as they thought to eat locally,” Badger explains. “As people evaluate their finances, they will budget for the things that they find value in. They may start to place the same value on pastured poultry that they do on a 20-ounce Coke, a bag of chips, or even a premium cable subscription.” 

So what makes mobile pastured poultry different from poultry you may find in the supermarket?

Just like good grazing management for ruminant animals like cows, rotating chickens to fresh pasture ensures that they have a species-appropriate and adequate diet. By moving poultry to fresh pasture on a regular basis, the soil is allowed time to absorb the litter that the chickens leave behind which feeds soil microbes, insects, and leads to more abundant regrowth. The same way that cows will overgraze a pasture if allowed to graze it continuously, chickens will peck, scratch, and forage the same area until the grass and soil life are gone. The startup costs, daily labor, and processing expenses for mobile pastured poultry are substantial, however. This is why mobile pastured poultry products are less commonly found in supermarkets or even farmers’ markets compared to grass-finished, pasture-raised beef.

Some large-scale poultry companies are attempting to capitalize on consumers’ increasing interest in pastured-raised poultry products by cutting small openings in large-scale confinement houses that provide access to the outdoors. Although this is a step forward in terms of welfare for the birds, it is a far cry from the true intent behind the pastured poultry movement, according to Badger.

“There are companies who try to market pasture-raised eggs based on access to 108 square feet of space per hen from an immovable barn with chickens that may never go outside. That’s a historically inaccurate understanding of pasture-raised because it removes the critical foundation of movement to fresh forage,” he explains.

To make it easier for consumers to connect with mobile pastured poultry producers in their area, APPPA has compiled a resource at www.EatPasturedRaised.com. Badger encourages consumers to simply speak with local farmers about their practices to learn more about how they produce their eggs and poultry.

“The farmers who direct market are seeing incredible increases in their sales. But some farmers put their whole business model into wholesale distribution, which means restaurants and foodservice,” Badger explains. “They’re losing so much business and scrambling fast to pick up the difference. Everyone has some farm near them that can use the support.”

Lauren Manning, Esq., LL.M., is a cattle farmer, an agricultural law professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, food journalist, and contributor to the forthcoming documentary and book project Sacred Cow: The environmental, nutritional, and ethical case for better meat.