The city of Vernon, California is struggling with COVID-19 outbreaks at nine of its industrial facilities, including one food processing plant that reported having at least 153 positive cases, according to health officials. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said the largest outbreak occurred at the Farmer John meatpacking plant, which is owned by Smithfield Foods and produces Dodger Dogs, among other products. Health officials said 153 employees of 1,837 who work at that facility tested positive for COVID-19 when testing was conducted between March through May. The company said it offers free COVID-19 testing to all of its employees, according to its website, where it also lists a series of measures it has taken to help contain the spread of COVID-19 at its facilities like increased social distancing, plexiglass barriers and temperature scanning.
The other Vernon facilities with reported outbreaks include Cal Farms Meat Company, CLW (meat), F. Gavina & Sons Inc. (coffee), Golden West Trading (meat and other products), Overhill Farms (frozen food), Rose & Shore (deli meat and prepared foods), Takaokaya USA (tea, seaweed and other products) and Vie De France Yamazaki (baked goods). The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted the food industry in the United States, as dozens of food processing plants across the country have had to shut down for days or even weeks to slow or stop the spread of the virus since March.
“We have seen disruption across the entire food supply chain, and of course, the meat supply chain is a subset of that,” Nick Vyas, the executive director of Center for Global Supply Chain Management at University of Southern California, told Good Morning America. “The disruption started in a meat supply chain, as was the food supply chain as a whole, partly because this assembly line processing lines and the facility itself did not really have the proper method in place to really protect the frontline workers, and we started to see one plant after the other really got exposed with the COVID-19.”
With food supply disruptions, prices are going up at the grocery store. The US Bureau of Labor’s consumer price index report said grocery bills were up 2.6% in April, the biggest monthly increase in nearly 50 years. For meat, the price of fresh beef increased 11.9% during the week ending May 9, compared to the same period last year, and the price of fresh chicken increased 7.5%.