Trump to order meat plants to stay open

Trump said he will sign an executive order to make sure meat plants will remain open, as meat producers struggle to stay open without the workers who have become infected by the coronavirus.
The order will use the Defense Production Act to classify meat processing as critical infrastructure to keep production plants open.
Trump on Tuesday told reporters that “there’s plenty of supply,” but that supply chains had hit what he called a “road block. It’s sort of a legal roadblock more than anything else," he said.
At least 22 plants processing meat from pork to chicken have closed at some point after clusters of employees tested positive for Covid-19, according to United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
The government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person, reported Politico.

Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, JBS pork processing in Worthington, Minnesota and Tyson Fresh Foods in Waterloo, Iowa have all closed indefinitely.
The JBS plant in Greeley was closed for two weeks for cleaning and testing after at least four COVID-19-related deaths and 102 positive cases were reported at the Weld County facility. The plant's 6,000 employees returned to work Friday after the facility reopened.
On Sunday, Tyson ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and other newspapers warning that the food supply line was in danger, and outlined the difficulty of producing meat while keeping more than 100,000 workers safe and shutting some plants.
“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," it read.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) had written a letter to Trump asking him to use the DPA to declare the food supply industry an essential industry, warning that consumers would see a meat shortage in a matter of days akin to the panic over toilet paper the virus created in its early days.