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Pandemic Gives Boost to Smaller Meat Processing Plants

Though COVID-19 certainly caused its share of issues as meat processors raced to figure out how to keep their workers safe, one of the biggest challenges the smaller organizations have faced is how to keep up with the rising demand.

Getty Images 453533793 Meat Processing Web

If there’s any food sector that’s been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s certainly meat processing. From the get-go, meat plants—where workers typically work shoulder to shoulder and have to shout to be heard over loud machinery—were hit hard and quickly became coronavirus hotspots. Plants were closed, operations suspended, and the big meat producers in particular had to figure out how to make production safer for their workers and for the supply chain.

“It really affected some of the big plants in a very negative way. And then it affected the whole supply chain,” says Dan Sambrooks, president and CEO at Diligent Innovation, which makes meat processing equipment and also designs meat plants and their production lines. “I’ve been in this business basically my whole life. I’ve never seen anything that’s affected the meat business and supply side like this.”

Changes made in reaction to the coronavirus will likely stay in place long-term. “I don’t know that the Plexiglas dividers will ever go away. There will be increased awareness because COVID-19 had such a profound effect on the industry,” Sambrooks says. “The plants shut down and tightened up the food chain, and there were ripple effects from the farmer all the way to the consumer.”


Read article   Read recommendations from the FDA and OSHA to assess operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ultimately, though, Sambrooks marvels less at the day-to-day shift in operations that COVID-19 has caused in meat processing operations than he does at the profound effect the pandemic has had on the business overall.

Consumers are increasingly turning away from the big operations in favor of getting their meat from smaller producers. They want to know how the animal was raised, whether it received antibiotics, what sort of environment it was raised in, and whether it was handled humanely. “They’ve become very involved in their decision of what they purchase and what they consume, and how they purchase it,” he says, musing, “I never thought people would be buying meat over the Internet.”

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