By Zachary Horner, Chatham News + Record Staff
Meat-processing plants like Siler City’s Mountaire Farms and Brookwood Farms are now required to continue operations during the pandemic, despite concerns from lawmakers and advocacy groups about the virus’ spread.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last Tuesday requiring the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to “take all appropriate action…to ensure that meat and poultry processors continue operations consistent with the guidance for their operations.” The order would, in practice, keep processors like Mountaire Farms and Brookwood Farms in Siler City open throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Multiple meat processing plants across the United States have closed in the wake of outbreaks — specifically, the Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; the JBS pork-processing facility in Worthington, Minnesota; and Tyson Fresh Foods’ plant in Waterloo, Iowa. According to an April 27 report from CNN Business, those three plants account for “approximately 15 percent of pork production” across the country.
Trump’s order states that “it is important” for such plants to continue operations “to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans.” Closures of plants, the order says, “threaten the continued functioning of the national meat and poultry supply chain, undermining critical infrastructure during the national emergency.”
“Given the high volume of meat and poultry processed by many facilities, any unnecessary closures can quickly have a large effect on the food supply chain,” the order states. “For example, closure of a single large beef processing facility can result in the loss of over 10 million individual servings of beef in a single day. Similarly, under established supply chains, closure of a single meat or poultry processing facility can severely disrupt the supply of protein to an entire grocery store chain.”
The order utilizes the Defense Production Act to give the president authority to require companies to operate in a certain way to meet national defense needs.
The decision was met with skepticism from U.S. Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), whose Fourth District will encompass most of Chatham County starting next year. Price and fellow Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) sent a letter to Trump and other administration officials, seeking mandated protections for workers in meat-processing plants. Price said in a statement that keeping plants open without “adequate” protections “places workers at extraordinary risk.”
“Severe outbreaks across meat-processing plants reveal the major deficiencies in protective measures with tragic results,” he said. “A secure food supply chain depends on the safety and wellbeing of frontline workers who should not have to choose between their health and their work. I urge the administration to implement our recommendations and will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that workers’ health remains a priority.”
The total spread of COVID-19 at Mountaire Farms’ Siler City plant is not entirely clear. Media reports from last week stated that more than 70 workers and family members had tested positive for the virus, but the company has not responded to multiple attempts for comment since the executive order went into place. Mark Reif, the company’s community relations manager for North Carolina, told the News + Record on April 15 that the company has been “proactive” in trying to protect employees during the outbreak.
Mountaire Farms in Siler City has been home to more than 70 positive COVID-19 tests of employees and their family members, according to media reports, as advocates express concerns about the plant staying open.
“Our employees are considered ‘essential employees’ working in an ‘essential industry’ to help ensure people have the food they need,” Reif said. “We have an amazing team at Mountaire Farms, that works together to produce the best quality products that our customers have come to expect from us. They have faced this challenge with strength and determination and we’re proud of them every day.”
The Chatham County Public Health Department has continued to work with other agencies like Piedmont Health Services to track Mountaire employees and family members with COVID-19 symptoms, according to a statement released May 1 from CCPHD Director Layton Long.
“While the CCPHD does not have the authority to inspect or permit meat-processing facilities,” Long said, “we have long understood the importance of these facilities to feeding communities as well as the potential for the virus to spread among employees and in the community.”
Long’s statement said that the department has collaborated with the county’s Emergency Management department, the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services and the N.C. National Guard, as well as Piedmont Health, since Mountaire’s first case was reported, and that mitigation and containment efforts were put in place before then.
“Local agencies and partners in Chatham County recognized early in the pandemic that its impacts could be considerable and widespread, particularly in those facilities and businesses that would be most vulnerable,” Long said. “Mountaire Farms was the first of these facilities we were able to meet with in late March.”
As meat-processing plants continue operations throughout the pandemic, organizations like The Hispanic Liaison in Siler City have been raising awareness of concerns at the Mountaire plant. A Facebook post from April 29 said Mountaire tested 356 “symptomatic workers and family members,” a small number relative to the total workforce.
“Many more family members are sick and didn’t get tested,” the post stated. “There’s an assumption that if one family member is sick, others have contracted as well, which eschews the real number of infections in our small town. According to workers we have spoken with, Mountaire is implementing the safety measures they promised, but they’re worried that the company is not sharing information with them about the extent of the outbreak.”
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