Unpacking the COVID Outbreaks in the Meatpacking Industry
To follow the outbreaks over time, check this story map
Beef, pork, and poultry processing plants have been related to coronavirus (COVID-19) hotspots in the US and internationally. Data shows that counties with more workers in the meatpacking industry tend to have a higher number of COVID-19 confirmed cases. In early April, outbreaks at Smithfield and JBS plants in South Dakota and Colorado received wide coverage from news outlets. And they were just the beginning.
Since the end of March, almost no week has passed without reports of outbreaks in US meat processing facilities. From April 9 to April 27, 115 plants across 19 states were affected by the virus according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Almost 5,000 employees in these plants became infected, representing 3% of their total workforce.
As of today, July 29, the pandemic has transited from denser urban centers into rural areas, and the meatpacking plants have played a major role in this trend. But why is this industry more susceptible to outbreaks than others? And why has it become a constant source of supertransmissors?
The infeasibility of practicing adequate social distancing is a well-known factor that facilitates the spread of COVID among workers in these plants. But a recent study of an outbreak in a German meat processing facility sheds light on other elements of the industry that are making transmission of the virus more efficient.
The lower temperatures and constant air re-circularization are also contributing to an increased virus transmission area, together with the demanding physical work in the plant. Inside the meatpacking plant, researchers reported risks of being contaminated by the virus even 8 meters away from the host. This is a distance 4 times greater than the transmission radius reported by the CDC, meaning that following the current guidelines might be insufficient to safely reopen these facilities.
Nevertheless, executives at Tyson Foods Inc. and Smithfield insist that the cost of halting production would be far more devastating. They claim closing meatpacking facilities would lead to the breaking of the food supply chain and to shortages of meat and poultry in supermarkets across the country. Supply chain specialist Professor Yossi Sheffi disagrees. In an interview with Vox, Prof. Sheffi said that they “don’t see it as a real danger to run out of food”. Most likely there would be spot shortages of specific meats due to the closure of certain facilities, but the supply chain will prevail.
Case Study: The Iowa Outbreaks
One of the first facilities to cut production was Tyson Foods’ pork plant in Columbus Junction, Iowa, after more than 24 employees contracted the virus on April 7th. The facility reopened a week later after being sanitized. However, only days after restarting operations another 86 cases were found to be related to an outbreak at the plant.
Four days later, on April 20th, the Iowa Department of Health found 730 employees had tested positive for the virus at another Tyson facility. This time in Perry, Iowa. The plant reopened after two days and operations are currently at normal capacity according to Meatpoultry.com.
In Iowa, of the 19 counties with the highest rate of confirmed cases per 1,000 population all either have packing plants or are bordering counties that have them. Using data from the Iowa Department of Health, I tested the statistical relationship between the number of workers at the meat industry and the number of confirmed cases.
The results indicate that there might be a positive relationship between the confirmed count and the number of employees working at meatpacking plants (p-value = 0.06487, N = 19). Furthermore, according to this model, every 100 additional employees at a meat processing plant accounts for 52 new cases of COVID-19 for every 100,000 people. However, there are many confounding factors to this, more data and analysis are required to reach an objective conclusion.
All in all, the meatpacking industry continues to operate with a capacity just slightly under the average of 2019, with no significant operational changes near the horizon. This suggests the US may have underestimated the social cost of keeping the plants running.
