Defense Production Act to Keep Meat Processing Plants Open

On Tuesday President Trump signed an Executive Order using the Defense Production Act to keep meat processing plants open. A number of plants processing pork, beef, chicken and turkey have shut down because of COVID-19. The result has been record high meat prices at the grocery store while at the same farmers livestock in their barns are worthless.

Livestock are not worth anything unless there is a plant able to process the meat into a form the consumer can buy! It is that simple! Hopefully President Trump's Executive Order will help. However, you need lots of employees in meat processing plants. Many have not wanted to work for fear of getting COVID-19. Hopefully additional procedures can be developed to keep employees safe.

I guess you could maybe send in the National Guard to work at meat processing plants. However it would take some time to train them too. Until this is resolved some livestock farmers will be faced with euthanizing their animals.