Around 3,000 healthy hogs were euthanized in Minnesota last week, according to the Minnesota Pork Producers Association, and around 200,000 or more could soon follow.
House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said Tuesday that the JBS hog plant in Worthington, Minnesota, is reopening today (Wednesday), but will be euthanizing hogs and not processing them into meat to reach consumers. The action will take a small crew that can practice social distancing, he noted.
And, President Donald Trump Tuesday said he would sign an executive order that would invoke
Meanwhile, Iowa Republican lawmakers, including the state’s governor and ag commissioner, are calling on USDA to compensate hog producers for animals they have to euthanize.
“At current capacity levels, there are 700,000 pigs across the nation that cannot be processed each week and must be humanely euthanized. Iowa produces one-third of the nation’s pork supply and one-fourth of the nation’s pork processing capacity. Simply put, Iowa pork producers cannot operate if they cannot send their pigs to market,” the letter said.
A group of Minnesota state lawmakers also penned a letter to President Donald Trump, asking for him to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to coordinate efforts to develop plans to reopen processing plants, to work with small processors to get license exemptions to ensure as many hogs as possible can be processed, work with regional governors and mobilize the National Guard to assist where needed and coordinate any hog destruction to take place at processing plants rather than on-farm.
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