Coronavirus: Iowa meatpacking plant reopens despite more than 1,000 cases among workers

Tyson Foods facility was shut down after county sheriff voiced fear for employees' safety

A Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Waterloo, Iowa is open again despite coronavirus cases among its workers surging into four figures, and despite new data from the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) that shows that meatpacking plants are uniquely vulnerable to coronavirus outbreaks.

The reopening comes as the state confirms that more than 250 Iowans have died from coronavirus, with around 12,000 confirmed cases. Of those, some 1,493 were in Black Hawk County, where the plant is the largest employer by far.

The plant’s epidemic mirrors the disease’s progress through meatpacking plants across the US, which the CDC says have seen infections spread rapidly through their workforce.

Among them is the Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, also at the centre of an outbreak – and also now reopened, albeit only on a partial basis. Like the Tyson plant, it has seen hundreds of confirmed cases among its workers, at one point making it one of the US’s largest coronavirus hotspots.

However, the implications of keeping plants closed are severe. With the bulk of the country’s meat supply produced at just a few plants, there are worries that shutting plants and sending workers home en masse could mean meat starts to disappear from the shelves of grocery stores.

With this in mind, Donald Trump issued an executive order to keep plants like Tyson’s open, saying that “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.”

In some places, the effect is already visible. Midwestern grocery chain Hy-Vee recently announced that “each customer will be limited to four packages of a combination of fresh beef, ground beef, pork and chicken when they checkout”.

And so many plants are reopening, some having put measures in place to try and reduce the risks of infection. The Tyson facility in Iowa has now added plexiglass screens and infrared temperature scanners for workers, and is issuing face shields and masks.

But Black Hawk County sheriff Tony Thompson, who in April raised the alarm about the virus’s spread at the plant, has said that if he sees infections among workers and county residents start to spike again, he would call for it to be shut down once more.

On a visit to Iowa this last weekend, vice president Mike Pence celebrated agribusinesses in the state for their efforts to reopen and resume production, saying they are helping to “get America back to work” – as the Trump administration is now prioritising.

“Everyone in food supply from the farm to the grocery store has delivered for the American people, and on behalf of your president and a grateful nation I want to say thank you to you all. It has truly been remarkable what you’ve done.”