WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is expected to use the Defense Production Act on Tuesday to compel meat processing plants to stay open amid the coronavirus pandemic and will provide liability protections, according to three sources familiar with the plan.
“The reason for this EO is there were discussions among certain processing companies (Tysons, for example) to keep only 20% of facilities open. The vast majority of processing plans could have shut down, reducing processing capacity in the country by as much as 80%,” an administration official explained to NBC News.
Trump’s plans to order plants to remain open was first reported by Bloomberg News.
“We have had some difficulty where they are having a liability where it’s really unfair to them,” Trump said at a small business event at the White House Tuesday afternoon. “I fully understand that it’s not their fault.”
Trump suggested he would sign the order shortly after the event.
The president also mentioned the executive order during an event in the Oval Office earlier Tuesday, telling reporters “We’re going to sign an executive order today I believe and that will solve any liability problems.”
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Trump said that he was “working with Tyson, which is one of the big companies in that world” on the order and described the problem as “sort of a legal roadblock more than anything else.”
Despite concerns about the food supply chain, Trump reassured that there is “plenty of supply.”
It is unclear what “liability problems” Trump will address, but the executive order has created a clash between meat companies and labor unions.
“We only wish that this administration cared as much about the lives of working people as it does about meat, pork and poultry products,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said in a statement. “When poultry plants shut down, it’s for deep cleaning and to save workers’ lives. If the administration had developed meaningful safety requirements early on as they should have and still must do, this would not even have become an issue. Employers and government must do better. If they want to keep the meat and poultry supply chain healthy, they need to make sure that workers are safe and healthy.”
Meat plant workers, who kill, cut and package poultry and beef in close quarters, have called for plant closures amid the coronavirus outbreak. Unions and advocacy groups have also called for plants that are staying open to do more to protect employees during the pandemic.
Diana Dietz, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Meat Processors, said “Plants have already been taking preventative measures and screening employees.”
She said that there are several practices that processors should implement to reduce the risk of exposure to employees, including having workers wear personal protective equipment; ensuring proper spacing in work areas and break rooms; consider staggering work stations so employees don’t face each other and split shifts to reduce the number of workers in a plant; and increase the frequency of cleaning and sanitation in the production areas in their plants.
Tyson Food was forced to close a pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, last week after more than 180 infections had been linked to the plant. The company warned that closing the plant, which accounts for nearly 4 percent of U.S. pork processing capacity, would have significant impact on the food supply chain.
Several other plants have temporarily closed after virus outbreaks, including a Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., and a JBS USA plant in Worthington, Minn.
Four employees of a Tyson Foods’ poultry plant in southwest Georgia died in April after becoming infected with the coronavirus.
An administration official said that the White House would work with the Department of Labor “to provide safety standards and guidance for workers to make sure they are kept safe and not put in harm’s way as they serve the public.”
