Smithfield meatpacking plant in NC has coronavirus case as company closes other sites
An employee at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, tested positive recently for the coronavirus, days after the company closed several plants because of outbreaks among workers.
Smithfield closed three meatpacking plants this week, starting with a large facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The company said Thursday that it would close two other plants in Cudahy, Missouri, and Martin City, Wisconsin, that rely on the Sioux Falls processing plant.
The Sioux Falls plant counts for as much as 4% to 5% of pork production in the United States, Smithfield said.
Smithfield said more than 500 workers at the Sioux Falls plant have COVID-19 and another 126 people connected to the plant contracted the virus, according to the Associated Press.
In North Carolina, Smithfield’s Bladen County facility is the largest pork processing plant in the world. The Bladen County plant continues to operate.
Bladen County Health Director Teresa Duncan said the plant is ”taking each employee’s temperature before they enter the facility for work as well as following all the guidelines the CDC suggests,” Bladen Online reports.
“Smithfield has taken several measures to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus,” Duncan told the Bladen Journal. The infected employee lives in another county, Duncan said.
She said county health officials are working with state and federal agencies to make sure the virus doesn’t spread at the Tar Heel plant, WECT reports.
“The health and well-being of the employees is our first priority,” she said, according to WECT.
In a news release, Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said, “The closure of our Martin City plant is part of the domino effect underway in our industry. It highlights the interdependence and interconnectivity of our food supply chain. Our country is blessed with abundant livestock supplies, but our processing facilities are the bottleneck of our food chain.
“Without plants like Sioux Falls running, other further processing facilities like Martin City cannot function. This is why our government has named food and agriculture critical infrastructure sectors and called on us to maintain operations and normal work schedules,” he said.
This story was originally published April 18, 2020 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Smithfield meatpacking plant in NC has coronavirus case as company closes other sites."
