Tyson said Thursday it has made the voluntary decision to temporarily halt operations at its Storm Lake, Iowa, pork processing facility, due in part to a delay in COVID-19 testing results and team member absences related to quarantine and other factors.
The company, in a statement sent to Meatingplace, said it will idle the harvesting of animals and finish processing over the next two days. Additional deep cleaning and sanitizing of the entire facility will be conducted before resuming operations later next week.
Tyson said it is working with local health officials and has completed COVID-19 testing of team members and contractors at the plant. The company said it will share verified test results, once complete data is available, with health and government officials, team members and other stakeholders.
When operations resume, team members at the Storm Lake facility will continue to have access to additional testing, daily clinical symptom screenings, nurse practitioners and enhanced education through Matrix Medical, which has a mobile unit onsite.
Separately, NBC-DFW reported that 220 workers at the Tyson Foods plant in Sherman, Texas, have tested positive for COVID-19. More than 1,600 workers were tested over a two-day period, the report quoted Grayson County judge Bill Magers as saying.
The Marshfield News-Herald reported that three employees at Abbyland Foods in Abbotsford, Wis., tested positive for COVID-19 and were in isolation. County health officials were working with the company to track, trace and contain the virus.
In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, 317 cases of COVID-19 were identified among poultry workers at area plants, local health officials reported, without naming the companies with affected workers, according to WHSV-TV.
To access Meatingplace’s ongoing coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, click here. To access our map of processing plants that have reported positive tests among employees, have closed and/or have reopened, click here.