Trump to order meat processing plants to remain open amid Covid-19 pandemic

President Donald Trump said he will take administrative action Tuesday to order meat processing plants to stay open amid attention over growing coronavirus cases and the impact on the nation’s food supply.

The order will use the Defense Production Act to classify meat processing as important infrastructure and mandate plants stay open to prevent a shortage of chicken, pork and other meat on supermarket shelves. Unions fired back, saying the White House was jeopardizing lives and prioritizing cold cuts over workers’ health.

More than 20 meatpacking plants have stopped temporarily under pressure from local authorities and their own workers because of the virus, including two of the nation’s largest, one in Iowa and one in South Dakota. Others have slowed production as workers have fallen ill or stayed home to avoid getting sick.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million food and retail workers, said Tuesday that 20 food-processing and meatpacking union workers in the U.S. have died of the virus. An estimated 6,500 are sick or have been shown while working near someone who tested positive, the union says.

As a result, industry leaders have warned that consumers could see meat shortages in a matter of days. Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world’s largest food companies, ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and other newspapers Sunday warning, “The food supply chain is breaking.” “As pork, beef and chicken plants are being made to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.”

Tyson suspended operations at its pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa after a slew of infections, and Smithfield Foods halted production at its plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota after an outbreak infected 853 workers there.