JBS SA

Fifth-generation cattle rancher aims to build biggest U.S. beef plant

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CHICAGO, June 6 (Reuters) – A fifth-generation cattle rancher and consultant plans to build the country’s largest beef plant in South Dakota with capacity to slaughter 8,000 head of cattle a day.

The $1.1 billion project could help address the Biden administration’s concerns about rising food prices and a lack of competition in the meat sector, though it would not be up and running until at least 2026. read more

The project is spearheaded by Kingsbury and Associates and Sirius Realty, both run by Megan Kingsbury of a South Dakota ranching family. She told Reuters she expects construction on the plant to begin in 2023 and take three years.

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The Biden administration and Congress scrutinized the beef industry after COVID-19 outbreaks temporarily shut slaughterhouses in early 2020, leaving ranchers with nowhere to deliver cattle and consumers facing meat shortages.

Four big companies – Cargill (CARG.UL), Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N), JBS SA (JBSS3.SA), and National Beef Packing Co (MRFG3.SA) – slaughter about 85% of all U.S. fed cattle, according to industry data. The administration has blamed a lack of competition in the sector for rising food prices. Meat companies deny the accusation. read more

Kingsbury’s project would slaughter around 1,000 more cattle per day than the current top processor, a Tyson’s plant in southeastern South Dakota.

“That’s the kind of investment the industry is going to need in the coming years,” said Derrell Peel, an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University.

But some industry analysts said the plant may struggle to find labor, develop supply chain relationships from scratch, and be profitable amid tighter cattle supplies.

Ranchers have reduced the size of the U.S. herd due to historic drought and low profitability, leaving fewer cattle for processors to slaughter.

Kingsbury said she is confident the new plant will overcome tight cattle supplies and labor issues. The plant aims to employ 2,500 people and use advanced technology seen in Europe and Asia to process beef with less labor, she said.

“We have to break the old mentality of the packing plant being a sweatshop,” Kingsbury said.

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Reporting by Tom Polansek and Christopher Walljasper
Editing by Marguerita Choy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Workers at U.S. meat plants, early Covid hot spots, are now getting vaccinated in many states.

Employees at food processing facilities, which had some of the country’s largest known coronavirus outbreaks early in the pandemic, are now eligible for vaccines in at least 26 states, a New York Times survey found.

The expansion of vaccines to food processing workers comes amid rapid widening of eligibility, especially for essential workers at greater risk of contracting the virus. Almost every state is vaccinating some subset of frontline workers, but the list of eligible professions varies widely. In at least six states, food processing workers are eligible in certain counties but not in others.

Meat and poultry processing facilities have largely remained open even as large outbreaks infected thousands of workers and killed dozens in the first months of the pandemic. The virus started to spread rapidly in meatpacking facilities as assembly-line workers stood side by side in tight quarters.

A JBS USA pork production plant in Worthington, Minn., with more than 700 recorded coronavirus cases held a mass vaccination event on Friday. JBS USA, a subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s largest meat-processing firm, has offered employees who receive the vaccine $100 incentives.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday that about 79.4 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 43 million people who have been fully vaccinated. About 2.25 million doses are given each day on average, up from less than a million two months ago.

With demand for vaccines still outpacing supply, states have faced competing interests in deciding which groups to prioritize. Eligibility opened to many food processing workers in early March across much of the Midwest, where meatpacking and food production are a major part of the economy and often a source of employment for recent immigrants.

In Kansas, where food processing workers are now eligible for the vaccine, nearly 4,000 reported cases have been tied to outbreaks in meatpacking plants, more than in any other setting except long-term care centers and correctional facilities.

“This is a livelihood that supports a number of immigrant populations,” said Marci Nielsen, the Kansas governor’s chief adviser on Covid-19. “And it was very important for the governor to send out a signal that she wants to keep those families safe and to keep these industries open.”

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