South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has refused to implement a statewide stay-at-home order, and now residents are paying the price. As of Tuesday, the state has nearly 1,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. An astonishing 768 of those are in Minnehaha county, which is where the Smithfield Pork plant that was forced to close indefinitely earlier this week is located.
In fact, 644 confirmed cases in Minnehaha are from that Smithfield Pork plant. The Argus Leader reports 518 confirmed cases among Smithfield plant employees and another 126 cases in people associated with employees. One worker, 64-year-old Augustin Rodriguez, died of COVID-19.
The plant employs around 3,700 people, so that is an astonishingly high rate of infection. It is currently the largest cluster of cases in the United States. The South Dakota plant produces approximately 5% of the nation’s pork.
Sioux Falls mayor Paul TenHaken told NPR it was not easy to get Smithfield executives to close the plant. He described the discussions as "tense" and said: "You know, you shut down a plant like that, it has a pretty big impact on the food supply. So we weren't taking this lightly, making this request."
The Sioux Falls plant wasn’t the only meat processing plant to close this week. Two other Smithfield plants—one in Martin City, Missouri (part of the greater Kansas City metro area) and one in Cudahy, Wisconsin—also shut their doors this week.
Three Latino workers from the JBS Meat Processing plant in Greeley, Colorado died last week, forcing the closure of that plant for deep cleaning. Workers were said to be working “elbow-to-elbow.” Farmworker advocates like Dolores Huerta told NBC News these “invisible” workers provide an invaluable service but don’t have enough information and aren’t getting necessary protections. Kim Cordova, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union, told NBC News one of the challenges is translating and communicating the threat to workers. “We have been filing grievances trying to get the company to file notices about COVID-19. They had very little material that was translated into the different languages; there are 30 languages spoken at that plant.”
Dr. Scott Gottlieb noted the rise in South Dakota’s cases even as the rest of the country begins to level off.
All of these closures are putting a strain on our national food supply, but don’t fret. There is a lot of meat available. NPR noted a glut of some items like bacon because restaurants and hotels aren’t buying right now and these are being rerouted to traditional grocery stores. And while these big plants are closing, local butchers in places like Texas are seeing a surge in customers.
At the end of the day, what we are seeing in South Dakota is a giant flashing red warning about what can happen if people are forced back to work too soon without enough testing, without proper protective gear, and without social distancing measures. The situation is getting so bad that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem may have to issue those stay-at-home orders after all.