Fresh Wave of Meat Plant Shutdowns Unlikely, JBS USA Chief Says
October 05 2020 - 6:34PM
Dow Jones News
By Jacob Bunge
Another wave of coronavirus-driven closures of meatpacking
plants is unlikely because worker testing and safety practices have
improved since the spring, the chief executive of beef and pork
giant JBS USA Holdings Inc. said.
JBS and other major meat companies have installed automated
temperature checkpoints, distributed safety gear to plant workers
and installed partitions between some work stations to catch
Covid-19 symptoms and prevent its spread in plants. Those moves
came as thousands of employee infections in March and April forced
JBS, Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill Inc. and other meat companies to
temporarily close plants to stem outbreaks.
"I'm pretty confident we are not going to have the size of the
disruption we saw in April and May," said JBS CEO Andre Nogueira at
The Wall Street Journal's Global Food Forum, held remotely on
Monday.
The company's efforts have helped instill some sense of security
among workers in doing their daily jobs, said Mark Lauritsen, head
of food processing, packing and manufacturing for the United Food
& Commercial Workers Union, which represents JBS plant workers.
But he warned against becoming complacent.
"In the back of our minds, we all know there's a potential for a
second wave," Mr. Lauritsen said in an interview. "What we know
about Covid-19 is that one case...can rapidly expand to
hundreds."
JBS is performing "surveillance tests" among its processing
plant workers, Mr. Nogueira said, to monitor for signs that
infections might be rising among employees. The company, a unit of
Brazilian meat conglomerate JBS SA, is also monitoring infection
levels in communities around its plants, which can guide how much
testing the company conducts among its workforce.
"The number of positives over the last two or three months in
the plants has been pretty low," Mr. Nogueira said. In some cases,
he said, JBS is bringing back older workers the company had sent
home with pay earlier this year due to their elevated risk of
infection and serious complications from the illness.
If cases surge in a community around a plant and closing the
facility would help to control the impact, JBS could again shut
sites down, Mr. Nogueira said.
After widespread restaurant shutdowns last spring, combined with
consumers shifting their food-buying to grocery stores, JBS labored
to redirect some restaurant-bound meat products to supermarkets.
The company now plans to build more flexible processing lines over
time, which would allow it to shift production more easily between
the two markets, Mr. Nogueira said.
JBS, Tyson and other meat companies are ramping up investment in
automated meat-processing systems that could make plant workers
more productive, or eventually reduce reliance on human meat
cutters. Mr. Nogueira said JBS expects to invest around $200
million annually in developing such systems over the next several
years.
"There's no question more automation is coming," he said.
--Kirk Maltais contributed to this article.
Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 05, 2020 18:19 ET (22:19 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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