Farmers are facing a crisis as meat plants close during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Iowa pork producer and president-elect of the National Pork Producers Council Jen Sorenson.
“We're in complete peril. … We need help, we need direct payments, we need support, and we need indemnification and support as we look to euthanizing a large number of hogs, which is inevitably what we have to do if we can't keep our plants open,” Sorenson said.
As plants producing 33% of the nation’s pork supplies have closed, Sorenson said farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy.
“We’re in a downward spiral. If we don't do something quickly, we'll see further consolidation and loss of thousands of family farms,” she told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.
Three of the nation's largest pork processing plants have been temporarily shut down because of coronavirus concerns among workers. House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson said yesterday that farmers now have a huge overstock of pigs that must be euthanized — estimating that there are roughly 60,000 to 70,000 pigs a day that could be killed in order to make space at farms. Peterson said the country could see pork shortages in grocery stores by next week, but Sorenson says the biggest crisis is on farms right now.
“The crisis is our hogs that are backing up, they have no place to go, we have new hogs coming into our barns. And we need a solution, we need our county, state and federal, local officials to work together and wrap our arms around the food chain and try and keep these plants open,” she said.