The closure, which the corporate attributed in a press release to “the escalating cost of doing business in California,” comes because the state rolls out a brand new regulation requiring livestock be given extra spacious confinements.
Smithfield, owned by Hong Kong-listed WH Group Ltd, didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters inquiry about whether or not the regulation, referred to as Proposition 12, contributed to the choice to close the plant.
Workers on the plant can be provided monetary and transition help, together with the choice to relocate to different Smithfield services, the corporate stated.
“A fair agreement that compensates their workers until next year has been reached,” stated John Grant, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers 770, which represents employees on the Vernon plant.
The plant, which processes pork for Smithfield’s Farmer John model, had among the many largest outbreaks of COVID-19 at any U.S. meat plant in accordance to calculations by the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN), which was cited by authorities companies and media all through the pandemic.
Smithfield and a subcontractor had been fined greater than $100,000 from California’s office security regulator in late 2020 for failing to adequately defend employees from the virus.
The pork firm stopped slaughtering pigs at its hometown plant in Smithfield, Virginia, in 2021, after a evaluate of its East Coast operations. [L1N2OP2VK]
(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
By Leah Douglas