|
 Van Beek and other farmers say they have no choice but to cull
livestock as they run short on space to house their animals or money
to feed them, or both. The world's biggest meat companies -
including Smithfield Foods Inc, Cargill Inc, JBS USA and Tyson Foods
Inc - have halted operations at about 20 slaughterhouses and
processing plants in North America since April as workers fall ill,
stoking global fears of a meat shortage.
Van Beek's piglets are victims of a sprawling food-industry crisis
that began with the mass closure of restaurants - upending that
sector's supply chain, overwhelming storage and forcing farmers and
processors to destroy everything from milk to salad greens to
animals. Processors geared up to serve the food-service industry
can’t immediately switch to supplying grocery stores.
Millions of pigs, chickens and cattle will be euthanized because of
slaughterhouse closures, limiting supplies at grocers, said John
Tyson, chairman of top U.S. meat supplier Tyson Foods.
Pork has been hit especially hard, with daily production cut by
about a third. Unlike cattle, which can be housed outside on
pasture, U.S. hogs are fattened up for slaughter inside
temperature-controlled buildings. If they are housed too long, they
can get too big and injure themselves. The barns need to be emptied
out by sending adult hogs to slaughter before the arrival of new
piglets from sows that were impregnated just before the pandemic.
"We have nowhere to go with the pigs," said Van Beek, who lamented
the waste of so much meat. "What are we going to do?"
In Minnesota, farmers Kerry and Barb Mergen felt their hearts pound
when a crew from Daybreak Foods Inc arrived with carts and tanks of
carbon dioxide to euthanize their 61,000 egg-laying hens earlier
this month.
Daybreak Foods, based in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, supplies liquid eggs
to restaurants and food-service companies. The company, which owns
the birds, pays contract farmers like the Mergens to feed and care
for them. Drivers normally load the eggs onto trucks and haul them
to a plant in Big Lake, Minnesota, which uses them to make liquid
eggs for restaurants and ready-to-serve dishes for food-service
companies. But the plant’s operator, Cargill Inc, said it idled the
facility because the pandemic reduced demand.
Daybreak Foods, which has about 14.5 million hens with
contractor-run or company-owned farms in the Midwest, is trying to
switch gears and ship eggs to grocery stores, said Chief Executive
Officer William Rehm. But egg cartons are in shortage nationwide and
the company now must grade each egg for size, he said.
Rehm declined to say how much of the company's flock has been
euthanized.
"We're trying to balance our supply with our customers' needs, and
still keep everyone safe - including all of our people and all our
hens," Rehm said.
DUMPING HOGS IN A LANDFILL
In Iowa, farmer Dean Meyer said he is part of a group of about nine
producers who are euthanizing the smallest 5% of their newly born
pigs, or about 125 piglets a week. They will continue euthanizing
animals until disruptions ease, and could increase the number of
pigs killed each week, he said. The small bodies are composted and
will become fertilizer. Meyer's group is also killing mother hogs,
or sows, to reduce their numbers, he said.
"Packers are backed up every day, more and more," said Meyer.
As the United States faces a possible food shortage, and
supermarkets and food banks are struggling to meet demand, the
forced slaughters are becoming more widespread across the country,
according to agricultural economists, farm trade groups and federal
lawmakers who are hearing from farmer constituents.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, along with both U.S. senators from a
state that provides a third of the nation's pork, sent a letter to
the Trump administration pleading for financial help and assistance
with culling animals and properly disposing of their carcasses.
"There are 700,000 pigs across the nation that cannot be processed
each week and must be humanely euthanized," said the April 27
letter.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said late Friday it is
establishing a National Incident Coordination Center to help farmers
find markets for their livestock, or euthanize and dispose of
animals if necessary.
Some producers who breed livestock and sell baby pigs to farmers are
now giving them away for free, farmers said, translating to a loss
about $38 on each piglet, according to commodity firm Kerns &
Associates.
[to top of second column] |
Farmers in neighboring Canada are also killing animals they can't sell or afford
to feed. The value of Canadian isoweans - baby pigs – has fallen to zero because
of U.S. processing plant disruptions, said Rick Bergmann, a Manitoba hog farmer
and chair of the Canadian Pork Council. In Quebec alone, a backlog of 92,000
pigs waits for slaughter, said Quebec hog producer Rene Roy, an executive with
the pork council.
A hog farm on Prince Edward Island in Canada euthanized 270-pound hogs that were
ready for slaughter because there was no place to process them, Bergmann said.
The animals were dumped in a landfill.
DEATH THREATS
The latest economic disaster to befall the farm sector comes after years of
extreme weather, sagging commodity prices and the Trump administration's trade
war with China and other key export markets. But it's more than lost income. The
pandemic barreling through farm towns has mired rural communities in despair, a
potent mix of shame and grief.
Farmers take pride in the fact that their crops and animals are meant to feed
people, especially in a crisis that has idled millions of workers and forced
many to rely on food banks. Now, they’re destroying crops and killing animals
for no purpose.
Farmers flinch when talking about killing off animals early or plowing crops
into the ground, for fear of public wrath. Two Wisconsin dairy farmers, forced
to dump milk by their buyers, told Reuters they recently received anonymous
death threats.
"They say, 'How dare you throw away food when so many people are hungry?'," said
one farmer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They don't know how farming
works. This makes me sick, too."
Even as livestock and crop prices plummet, prices for meat and eggs at grocery
stores are up. The average retail price of eggs was up nearly 40% for the week
ended April 18, compared to a year earlier, according to Nielsen data. Average
retail fresh chicken prices were up 5.4%, while beef was up 5.8% and pork up
6.6%.
On Van Beek's farm in Rock Valley, Iowa, one hog broke a leg because it grew too
heavy while waiting to be slaughtered. He has delivered pigs to facilities that
are still operating, but they are too full to take all of his animals.
Van Beek paid $2,000 to truck pigs about seven hours to a Smithfield plant in
Illinois, more than quadruple the usual cost to haul them to a Sioux Falls,
South Dakota, slaughterhouse that the company has closed indefinitely. He said
Smithfield is supposed to pay the extra transportation costs under his contract.
But the company is refusing to do so, claiming "force majeure" – that an
extraordinary and unforeseeable event prevents it from fulfilling its agreement.
Smithfield, the world’s largest pork processor, declined to comment on whether
it has refused to make contracted payments. It said the company is working with
suppliers "to navigate these challenging and unprecedented times."
Hog farmers nationwide will lose an estimated $5 billion, or $37 per head, for
the rest of the year due to pandemic disruptions, according to the industry
group National Pork Producers Council.
A recently announced $19 billion U.S. government coronavirus aid package for
farmers will not pay for livestock that are culled, according to the American
Farm Bureau Federation, the nation's largest farmer trade group. The USDA said
in a statement the payment program is still being developed and the agency has
received more requests for assistance than it has money to handle.
Minnesota farmer Mike Patterson started feeding his pigs more soybean hulls –
which fill animals' stomachs but offer negligible nutritional value – to keep
them from getting too large for their barns. He's considering euthanizing them
because he cannot find enough buyers after Smithfield indefinitely shut its
massive Sioux Falls plant.
"They have to be housed humanely," Patterson said. "If there's not enough room,
we have to have less hogs somehow. One way or another, we've got to have less
hogs."
(Reporting By Tom Polansek and P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago. Additional reporting
by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Writing by P.J. Huffstutter; Editing by
Caroline Stauffer and Brian Thevenot)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
