On recent earnings calls, shareholders in some publicly traded meat companies asked whether the Trump administration’s deportation plans — among other issues — might pose a challenge to their industry. “We’ve been there before. “It has not affected our business,” Tim Klein, CEO of National Beef, owned by Brazilian food company Marfrig, said in response to a question. Question from a shareholder. In response to a similar question in A Tyson Foods earnings call“There is a lot we don’t know at this point, but I would remind you that we have successfully run this business for over 90 years, regardless of who is in control,” said CEO Donnie King.
It is not clear whether the Trump regime will target meatpacking facilities operated by the industry’s largest companies, given the preferential treatment these companies sometimes received during Trump’s first presidency. During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump issued an executive order allowing this Plants to continue workingeven when meat processors were among Most affected by infections. The US House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis later found that Tyson’s legal department had drafted text for the resolution Proposed system.
“These large meatpacking companies prevented additional protections to protect workers, in part by engaging in a coordinated effort with political officials in the Trump administration to insulate themselves from oversight, force workers to remain in dangerous conditions, and shield themselves from oversight.” The committee concluded liability for any resulting illness or death of the worker In the report Released December 2022.
Labor supply is limited in meatpacking plants and the agriculture industry as a whole, says Cesar Escalante, a professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. The industry needs more workers, says Escalante, who argues that the United States should expand the H-2A seasonal agricultural worker visa system to include more livestock workers. Small farms are more likely to be affected by worker shortages, Escalante says, while larger farms may turn to mechanization.
If meatpacking workers are displaced en masse, it could lead to higher prices for consumers. Report from Texas A&M Agrave Research It is estimated that eliminating immigrant labor on U.S. dairy farms would nearly double retail milk prices. It’s not clear what effect Trump’s deportation plan will have on meat or food prices in general, because much about the plan is still unknown. “We don’t know yet how this will all end,” Hubbard says.