1.5 million North Carolina chickens depopulated

About 1.5 million chickens in North Carolina are being depopulated in North Carolina due to a lack of available processing capacity as poultry plants deal with outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers.

Roy Graber Headshot
(Yurii Bukhanovskyi | Bigstock)
(Yurii Bukhanovskyi | Bigstock)

About 1.5 million chickens are being depopulated in North Carolina due to a lack of available processing capacity as poultry plants deal with outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers.

Joe Reardon, the state’s assistant agriculture commissioner, said the depopulation has already started, but did not elaborate on where, saying the culling was “farm specific.”

Reardon told the News Observer depopulation was “the very last thing that any of these farmers would ever want to do, so it would be a last resort.”

“But the continued lack of processing capacity over a long period of time with this ‘just in time’ process that we have on animal production puts us in this very untenable situation.”

Among the poultry companies with plants in North Carolina are Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Wayne Farms, Mountaire Farms, Pilgrim’s Pride, House of Raeford Farms and Sanderson Farms.

Sanderson Farms and Tyson Foods both earlier announced that they had not had to depopulate any chickens companywide. Sanderson Farms CEO Joe F. Sanderson Jr. said that during the BMO Capital Markets Global Farm to Market Conference on May 13, while Tyson Foods CEO Noel White made his statements during a conference call with reporters on May 4 that coincided with the release of Tyson’s financial results of the second quarter of fiscal year 2020.

Sanderson did say the company sent 23 people home with pay when a COVID-19 outbreak was suspected at its facility in Kinston. Sixteen or 17 of those people later tested positive, he added.

Tyson Foods announced on May 20 that 570 workers at its poultry plant in Wilkesboro – most of whom were asymptomatic ­– tested positive for COVID-19. That facility was temporarily closed on May 9-11 in order for deep cleaning and sanitation procedures to be done.

 View our continuing coverage of the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic.

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