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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

China’s Covid surge hits meatpackers, with slaughter rates down

A customer shops for pork at a market in Shanghai on March 13, 2020.  (Qilai Shen/Bloomberg)
By Hallie Gu Bloomberg

The jump in Covid infections across China is hurting the country’s massive meatpacking industry, adding to signs of growing disruption from Beijing’s sudden dismantling of virus restrictions.

Slaughter rates for pigs have dropped in the past week, indicating a labor shortage at meat plants, according to Zhu Di, an analyst with Guangfa Futures.

Meat producers said employee attendance and production are quite unstable right now as workers are getting infected all around the same time.

The situation is similar to what happened in other countries early in the pandemic.

Meat plants were a hotspot of Covid-19 outbreaks in the U.S. and across Europe, in part due to the high density of workers in an indoor environment and the prolonged close contact of personnel on the production line.

This threatened the health of workers and the wider society.

The key difference now is that China has taken a decisive step toward living with the virus and is not trying to control a surge in infections.

Factories are going to great lengths to keep the machines running as outbreaks have the potential to roil production of everything from pork to cars to iPhones.

The overall impact on meat production will be limited and short-lived, Zhu said.

The disruption is happening at a time when meat consumption is weaker than expected ahead of Lunar New Year as people may be wary about dining out and want to avoid large gatherings.

Some poultry slaughterhouses had to offer extra payments to employees last week to maintain operating rates after many workers took leave, according to commodities consultancy Mysteel.