House passes $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill
The HEROES Act is largest in congressional history; congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reports.
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The United States pork industry is facing a crisis due to coronavirus-related closures -- with industry insiders warning that up to 10 million hogs face euthanasia.
Pork packing-plant capacities have dropped by over 40 percent during the outbreak, according to the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). It referred to the crisis as the “COVID-19 bottleneck,” explaining the number of pigs ready for harvest has superseded the capacity to do so.
This has also meant that America’s meat supply has been down.
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“The food supply chain is vulnerable,” Tyson Foods warned in a statement late last month. “As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.”
But, meat shortages aren’t the only problem facing the meatpacking industry. Financial stability and animal-welfare concerns also have arisen from the coronavirus pandemic.
“These hogs will eventually stay on farms too long and grow too large to be accepted by harvest facilities. The situation is taking a severe emotional and financial toll on hog farmers,” the NPPC told Fox News in a statement.
When pigs reach 270 pounds, they’re ready for harvest, which means they are sent either to processing plants for restaurant consumption or to grocery stores for purchase.
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According to the NPPC, “Hogs that exceed weight specifications cannot be processed through the nation’s primary harvest facilities due to constraints in the equipment and concerns with worker safety.”
Therefore, “U.S. hog farmers now face the tragic reality: up to 10 million hogs... with no place to go.”
Many farmers have been facing the reality of mass culling – the euthanasia of their farm animals.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has laid out “preferred methods” on how to depopulate swine “humanely.”
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But, the AVMA recognized that depopulation of farm animals will not always be done entirely humanely and the guidelines noted, “When the absence of pain and distress cannot always be achieved, depopulation must still be guided by balancing the ideal and the ethical impulse of minimal pain.”
Animal-rights groups such as Mercy for Animals have fought back against some of the euthanasia methods, along with the funds allocated for “depopulation” in the HEROES Act passed by the House of Representatives last week.
“Because of COVID-19, chickens, pigs and other animals killed for their flesh are being slaughtered in ways most people find abhorrent. Hens are smothered with foam, pigs are shot in the head, while their young are slammed against the pavement,” PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange told Fox News.
The NPPC has requested over $1.6 billion in emergency funds from Congress, $1.17 going towards compensating farmers retroactively from April 19.
The other portion of $505 million would be divided among “depopulation expenses” and facilitating “environmentally responsible disposal.”
“The last time we had plant capacity issues was in 1998,” Iowa State University economist Dr. Dermot Hayes said. “The [U.S. Department of Agriculture] acted too slowly and with too little money and we lost an entire generation of hog producers.”
But, the NPPC told Fox News that it was “pleased with [the] livestock agriculture provisions included in the HEROES Act passed by the House last week.”
Meat suppliers argued that as long as meatpacking production remained slow due to COVID-19 regulations, animals will continue to be “depopulated” to make room for the new pigs coming into production.
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“The meat trade is an egregiously violent industry and now that we know that raising and killing animals for food is linked to SARS, swine flu, bird flu, and now a novel coronavirus, it's as clear as the gloved hand in front of your masked face that it's past time to go vegan,” Lange said.
Neither Mercy For Animals nor the AVMA could be reached immediately for comment.
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