PHOTO: KOOS GROENEWOLD
and packing poultry. Meat giant Tyson foods warned at the end of April that the food supply chain was in danger of col- lapsing. Board chairman John Tyson fears that millions of animals will have to be destroyed due to the closure of pro- cessing facilities. And Tyson is not alone in that: since April the world’s largest meat companies – including Smithfield Foods, Cargill and JBS USA – have had to shut down
No food service, no ducks
One of the first consequences of the lockdown, stay at home or shelter in place orders in many countries was that the food service industry ef- fectively stopped working. Yes, there were some smart entrepreneurs who switched to home deliveries and others that set up take away counters, but the traditional restaurant business effectively ceased. This had an immediate impact on the demand for and turnover from poul- trymeat. A sector that was particularly severely affected was the duck meat business of Duck-To farms in the Netherlands, part of part of the BR-Group which includes Bangkok Ranch. The Duck-To farms and pro- cessing facility is the only duck producer in Northwestern Europe and provides duck meat to the food service industry and Chinatown busi- nesses in Europe. This market has totally crashed, leading to difficult de- cisions at Duck-To. In March the company decided to stop hatching ducklings and placing them on farms for an initial period of eight weeks, effectively halting production and leaving farms empty. All birds that were already in the grow-out phase would be processed and then
stocked as frozen product. The owner expects that the decision will rip- ple across the whole duck sector as parent stock will also be slaugh- tered earlier than planned to cut costs.
Duck-To owner Gert Jan To- mas sen was forced to make hard decisions and temporari- ly halt produc- tion.
operations in processing plants in North America as workers fell ill.
Early signs of the impact of the virus could be seen in March when at least one worker at a chicken processing plant in the US State of Georgia owned by Perdue was confirmed to have COVID-19, making the safety of other workers at the plant a volatile issue. On Monday 23 March dozens of other
Workers stand in close proximity to one another, increasing the risk of corona transmission.
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