Tyson Foods Inc., which closed its largest pork processing plant in Iowa last week amid a coronavirus outbreak in the facility, warned in a full-page ad in The New York Times on Sunday that “the food supply chain is breaking.” “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,” John Tyson, chairman of the board of Tyson Foods, wrote in the ad. “As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.” The chairman also wrote that “millions of animals—chickens, pigs and cattle—will be depopulated because of the closure of our processing facilities.” The company’s plant shutdown follows the decisions of two other major meat companies, Smithfield and JBS, to shutter facilities due to outbreaks among employees.
