Smithfield Foods on Wednesday said it will begin to resume operations in Sioux Falls, S.D., today after receiving confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USDA that the company is in full compliance with all CDC and Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines.
The company will take a phased approach to resuming operations, with the harvest floor set to reopen on May 11, Smithfield said in an announcement. The company anticipates the facility will be fully operational by late May.
Testing, administered by the state of South Dakota, is available to all Smithfield employees prior to returning to work, the company said. More than 2,000 employees have been tested, with more tests to be conducted in the coming weeks as operations ramp up.
The Sioux Falls facility, one of the country’s largest pork processing plants, has been closed for more than three weeks. It represents 4% to 5% of total U.S. pork production and employs 3,700 people.
The Cargill protein facility in Milwaukee began a temporary idle on Wednesday in accordance with a city health department directive, a company spokesperson confirmed to WTMJ-TV.
Cargill will continue to pay the 200 employees affected by the closure and has offered up to 80 additional hours of paid leave, according to the WTMJ report. The company told Fox6 News that employees will be tested for COVID-19 during the closure, and it hopes to resume operations at the Cargill Meat Solutions plant as soon as possible.
A Tyson Foods spokesperson on Wednesday confirmed that a “small number” of people who work at the company’s case-ready plant in Sherman, Texas, have tested positive for COVID-19, KTEN reported. The Grayson County Health Department, which counts Tyson as the county’s second-largest employer with more than 1,700 employees at the plant, tested the workers, the report said.
The public health department in Cudahy, Wis., released final numbers from COVID-19 testing of all workers at Smithfield Foods’ facility in Cudahy, listing 86 positive cases to date among the approximately 1,000 employees who work at the plant.
The department provided free testing for the plant’s employees in partnership with the city of Cudahy, Wisconsin Army National Guard, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1473, Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management, and Smithfield.
In Pennsylvania, the number of positive cases of COVID-19 among workers at Smithfield Foods’ plant in Arnold has risen to 12, the president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4. Six cases were confirmed among workers at the plant in mid-April.
A seventh worker at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colo., has died after being infected with COVID-19, according to an update Wednesday from the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment. A total of 280 workers at the plant are confirmed positive for COVID-19.
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.
This item was updated to correct the town where the Smithfield plant is located.