As coronavirus continues to close meat processing plants throughout the United States, overcrowded farms are forced to euthanize their pigs, according to United Press International.
"I really, really don't want to kill my pigs," Howard Roth, president of the National Pork Producers Council, told UPI. "But it is getting close here. I know there are farmers who have had to kill their pigs, farmers are aborting sows. It's really awful."
Roth said the American pork industry kills 2.5 million pigs for processing each week. During this week, however, the industry will only kill two million, creating backups at farms around the country.
"We were already backed up by about a half million. This is bad," Roth said.
Last week, Smithfield Foods Inc. announced it was shuttering pork-processing plants in Missouri and Wisconsin due to coronavirus outbreaks. Those closures came after the company announced an earlier closing of one of its South Dakota plants.
Smithfield Foods CEO Kenneth Sullivan said at the time of those closures that the high number of plant closures "is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply."
"It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation's livestock farmers," he added.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.