Kansas Officials Actively Assisting Packing Plants, Workers
Kansas officials are actively working to keep the state’s beef packing facilities operational in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Mike Beam said on AgriTalk (April 23, 2020) that Kansas Governor Laura Kelley and officials from the State Department of Health and interior are “engaging multiple times a day with the processing facility representatives.”
Beam also emphasized Kansas officials are engaged with the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., “pointing out to the folks in DC that this is a critical infrastructure, despite other plants in other regions of the nation having shut down temporarily. These plants in Kansas are still trying to operate and are going above and beyond the guidelines of CDC, to keep in operation.”
As of Wednesday (April 24), Beam said all of the Kansas beef facilities were operational, though not at full capacity. He said it is critical to maintain that harvest capacity while still protecting the health of the employees and the communities where they live.
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