Working in fear, immigrants keep US poultry plants running

Tina says a little prayer every time she heads to work at a Delaware poultry plant, a plea that this will not be the day that the invisible killer picking off her colleagues comes for her.

With the coronavirus shutting down meat plants and threatening the country's food supply, she would rather not be there at all, but President Donald Trump has designated the sector as strategic, and low-paid workers like her as essential. 

The 27-year-old mother works shifts at the Perdue packing plant in Georgetown, a major employer among the thousands of fellow Haitians settled in the area. If she wants to hold on to her job, she feels she has little choice but to clock in for her shifts, despite the risk to her and her family.

"Every day I come, I just pray to God that nothing happens," said Tina -- one of few workers who would agree to speak to a reporters, although even she declined to provide her full name for fear of reprisals.

"I want to go home, I have three kids at home, a baby, but I can't do that," she told AFP, speaking behind a mask. "I have no choice, bills are coming from left to right." 

With no way of knowing who might be carrying the virus, "everyone is afraid of getting sick, people still works close together."

"They don't tell us who has been tested positive. Was that person beside me, talking to me, you never know."

Tina believes too little was done, too late, to protect workers like her.

"I just think that they should close a few weeks so they can clean the whole plant," she said.

The number of coronavirus infections has recently soared in the Delmarva peninsula, which reaches south out of Delaware to eastern Maryland and the northeast of Virginia.

The poultry packing industry has thrived off the cheap labor provided by Haitians and Hispanics, but it also has meant that they have been the first to be cut down by the disease.

Fear of hospitals

The small town of Salisbury, the historic base of Perdue, is home to a community of some 5,000 Haitians, at least 40 percent of whom are infected, according to Habacuc Petion, the owner of Oasis radio, which broadcasts in Creole to an estimated 20,000 listeners in the Delmarva area.

Many work for Perdue, and are refusing to stay home for fear of being sacked.

"Even if they have fever, they take a pill and go to work," said Petion.

"COVID-19 touched home," said the 45-year-old. "My cousin was 44, working at Perdue plant. Beginning of April, he could not breathe, his wife convinced the medics to take him to the hospital. In less than two weeks he died."

The disease's toll has also been boosted by a fear of hospitals and by the language barrier for many Haitians, doctors said.

"When they see people dying in New York hospitals, the lack of material and people put in dumps, they are scared thinking they won't receive the care they need -- and end up dying," said Nadya Julien, a Haitian nurse practitioner in Laurel, Delaware.

Some who speak Creole but little English have trouble explaining their symptoms, she said.

She herself contracted the disease and was hospitalized for six days in April, a story she tells her patients to help them overcome their fears.

'Temptation'

Nurse practitioner Emanie Dorival said she alerted the local authorities very early to the number of cases piling up in her surgery in Seaford, Delaware.

"We are a rural area," she said. "We don't have the capacity in our hospitals if 200 cases show up."

While she agrees the poultry industry is "essential" she says "there is a way to keep it safe for the workers and the community."

Several major US plants where farmers send cattle, pigs and poultry have shut due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 between employees, who are often in close proximity on production lines and on breaks.

Faced with the threat of disruption to the nation's food supply, Trump has ordered meat and poultry plants to remain open during the pandemic that has claimed almost 70,000 lives.

Perdue has said it is doing all it can to ensure workers' safety, taking temperatures, providing protective equipment and practicing social distancing on the production line. Where it is impossible to keep workers a safe distance apart, it said it has installed screens.

It also increased workers' wages -- which Petion described as "a temptation that a lot of people can't resist."

Local health authorities are meanwhile stepping up testing for the virus, with factory workers at the front of the line. In Salisbury, some 1,500 people underwent tests on Friday and Saturday at the town's sports stadium. The results are expected this week.

Agence France-Presse

Chickenjoy supplier Cargill shifts to retail as pandemic chokes restaurant demand

MANILA - Poultry supplier Cargill Philippines said Wednesday it shifted to retail after the COVID-19 pandemic slashed demand from restaurants.

Cargill, which supplies poultry for Jollibee Chickenjoy, turned to new markets such as grocery stores, said its corporate affairs director Chris Ilagan.

Currently, there is an "oversupply" of poultry products, pushing farm gate prices to fall to as low as P30 from P70 per kilo, Ilagan said 

"In the quick service restaurants, we have seen a drastic drop [in demand], the halting of their operations, very minimal coming back online," Ilagan said.

"We have gone into the retail space, we are servicing now groceries, which is beyond us prior to COVID. I guess this is the bright spot and it’s teaching us new ways on how we can potentially serve new markets," he added.

President Rodrigo Duterte extended the lockdown in high risk areas until May 15, where restaurants are only allowed to open for drive thru and deliveries. 



Consumers are likely to stay away from fast food even after the enhanced community quarantine is lifted due to lingering COVID-19 risks, he said.

In general community quarantine areas, where restrictions are fewer compared to ECQ, those aged 20 and below and 60 and above are still required to stay at home, Ilagan said.

"After this COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end and we’re certainly keeping our eyes open on those sort of opportunities," he said.

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Chicken supply in peril as lockdown chokes poultry farmers’ access to markets, supplies

MANILA – Poultry farmers are finding it difficult to supply chicken to Metro Manila and parts of Luzon because local government units are not implementing the policies laid down by the national government, the head of an industry group said on Sunday. 

The United Broiler Raisers Association (UBRA) said some LGUs have set up roadblocks and personnel restrictions that have affected their deliveries and supply chains. This was in spite of the order from the national government to allow food deliveries through checkpoints.

“There was an LGU in Nueva Ecija who piled 2 dump trucks in the middle of the road and no one can pass (not) even their constituents. Things like those disrupt the supply chain and also the movement of essential personnel,” UBRA president Bong Inciong said in an interview with ANC.

Central Luzon and the Calabarzon areas are particularly critical to the supply of poultry to Metro Manila and Luzon, Inciong said. 

Poultry farmers, he said, hope that by this week, the national government will be able to convince LGUs to withdraw restrictions on the movement of poultry farm personnel; the delivery of feeds, medicines and other supplies; as well as the delivery of poultry to markets.

“If we don’t straighten this out… in 30 days we will start to feel the effects.”

The poultry industry has also been battered by the drop in demand, which plunged farmgate prices of chicken to P30 on Saturday from P69 before the lockdown, Inciong said. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

China's duck farmers cash in as disease slashes pork output

JIAXIANG, China - On a 30-hectare (74-acre) plot of land in China's Shandong province poultry hub, more than half a million white-feathered ducks are busy eating, chattering and laying eggs to produce cheap meat for thousands of factory canteens.

With birds already packed into around 60 open-sided buildings, farm owner Shenghe Group is expanding further, aiming to raise output by 30 percent this year to capture record profits as a plunge in pig numbers shrinks production of pork, China's favorite meat.

"The market prospects are very good now because of African swine fever," said Shenghe Chairman Wang Shuhong, whose firm sells about 300,000 ducklings a day for fattening and slaughter.

The deadly pig disease has already reduced China's hog herd by more than a quarter, according to official data. As many as half of the country's breeding sows are thought to have died or been slaughtered to cope with disease outbreaks.

Pork production will fall by 30 percent or about 16 million tonnes, say analysts at Dutch lender Rabobank, pushing prices to new records and leaving a gaping hole in the country's protein supply.

CHEAP PROTEIN

Higher pork prices - up about 35 percent in a year - have already fueled a surge in poultry meat demand. Chicken breast is about 20 percent more expensive than a year ago, while duck breast has nearly trebled in price to 14,600 yuan ($2,125) a tonne, according to Shenghe.

This is still only about half the cost of pork, but such prices are unheard of in China, where breast is typically the cheapest part of the bird.

About 80 percent of the world's ducks are raised in China, but are traditionally eaten in the south, where fried duck tongues, braised feet and spicy duck neck are popular snacks, and duck intestines make up a hotpot.

In recent years, however, more ducks have been processed for use by cost-conscious catering firms, supplying large canteens feeding schools, factories, businesses and the military.

These buyers are now switching as much pricey pork as they can to duck.

A procurement manager with a catering firm that supplies about 100 large clients around China said he has replaced about 20-30 percent of the pork on menus with either chicken or duck meat. He declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"We may switch even more. But our concern is that the poultry price is now going up as well," he said.

The price of day-old ducklings, sold by farms like Shenghe, has hovered around 6 yuan, 3 times the usual level, since July last year.

Prices eased last month as farmers held off restocking during hot summer weather, but are rising again and set to go higher, said Dong Xiaobo, China general manager for French genetics company Orvia, the No.2 supplier of breeding ducks.

Orvia is sold out 6 months ahead and has even had calls from pig farmers considering raising ducks after losing their hogs to African swine fever.

"I've never seen this in our 10 years in this market," said Dong.

PIG CRISIS, DUCK OPPORTUNITY

As swine fever continues to spread, China's vice-premier Hu Chunhua has urged poultry farmers to help fill the protein gap to maintain social and economic stability.

Analysts warn the disease could hit some farms more than once, and ratings agency Fitch forecasts pork output will stay below 2018 levels through 2021.

With output of about 5 million tonnes last year, less than half China's chicken production, duck meat has plenty of room for growth.

The barrier to entry is lower for ducks than broiler chickens and breeding stock is more available, said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank.

Broiler chicken farmers rely almost entirely on imported breeding stock, which has been restricted by China's bans on imports from key markets because of bird flu outbreaks. Output may expand less than 5 percent this year, said Pan.

Any rapid expansion carries risks however. In densely stocked farms, diseases like bird flu, several strains of which are circulating in China, spread easily.

And it remains to be seen whether duck farmers can hold on to a bigger share of the meat market when pork output recovers.

Duck farmers were forced out of the industry in droves between 2012 and 2016 when overproduction killed profits, and most people still want more pork dishes than any other meat, said the catering company manager.

But Shenghe's Wang, who is planning to expand downstream with a slaughterhouse later this year, is not worried.

"Pork output won't go up in the next 3 years and will take at least 5 years to recover," he said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

S.Korea temporarily bans movement of poultry to fight bird flu

SEOUL - South Korea's agriculture ministry said on Monday it will issue a temporary nationwide ban on the transportation of poultry to contain the spread of bird flu, with 43 outbreaks recorded in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement that the movement control order will be effective for 48 hours, from 1500 GMT on Monday or midnight in Seoul.

Since the first outbreak of a severe strain of bird flu known as H5N6 was reported on Nov.18., South Korea has ramped up quarantine measures to stop a wider spread of the virus, including issuing a 48-hour nationwide standstill order three weeks ago.

A total of 43 bird flu outbreaks had been confirmed as of Dec. 11, with another nine possible cases being tested, according to the ministry statement.

To prevent the spread of bird flu, the ministry said at least 8.8 million farm birds were culled and plans to slaughter 1.5 million more. That would be over 10 percent of the country's poultry population of nearly 85 million.

Although cases of human infections from the H5N6 virus have previously been reported elsewhere including China, no cases of human infection have been found in South Korea.

source: news.abs-cbn.com