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Law360 (March 12, 2020, 3:25 PM EDT) -- The U.S. pork industry is warning that the squeeze of worsening labor shortages as the new coronavirus spreads could bring "catastrophic" consequences for pig farmers and threaten trade with China.
The National Pork Producers Council, a trade association, wrote in a Tuesday letter to President Donald Trump, members of Congress and administration officials that the pork industry "is headed for a serious market disruption with catastrophic implications for hog farmers."
As the U.S. labor market tightens, pork processing plants have struggled to find enough workers to fill their shifts. This problem has only been exacerbated by the spread of the coronavirus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19, as school closures have prevented parents from working, the letter says.
"The specter of market-ready hogs with nowhere to go is a nightmare for every pork producer in the nation," Howard A.V. Roth, NPPC president, wrote in the letter. "It would result in severe economic fallout in rural communities and a major animal welfare challenge."
The pork industry's labor shortage could also cause a "huge dent" in the trade imbalance between the U.S., the largest exporter of pork, and China, the association said.
The agricultural industry has been particularly hard-hit by Trump's tit-for-tat tariff fight with China, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to roll out a $16 billion aid package last year.
The council also pushed the government to make more work visas available to mitigate the shortage and "for the administration to develop support plans for pig farmers impacted by bottlenecks in the supply chain."
The U.S. House of Representatives advanced a bipartisan immigration reform bill in December that would expand the H-2A visa program, which gives temporary visas to seasonal migrant farmworkers, but the bill is still pending before the Senate.
A spokesperson for the White House didn't respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
--Editing by Haylee Pearl.
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