How One City Mayor Forced A Pork Giant To Close Its Virus-Stricken Plant
Smithfield Foods didn't want to stop slaughtering hogs at its Sioux Falls pork plant, even after hundreds of workers got sick with the coronavirus. Then the city's mayor forced the company's hand.
Paul TenHaken, the 42-year-old mayor of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said it wasn't easy getting the world's top pork producer to shut down one of its biggest plants.
"It was tense," TenHaken said. "You know, you shut down a plant like that, it has a pretty big impact on the food supply. So we weren't taking this lightly, making this request."
TenHaken, a former marketing entrepreneur, realized in early April that his city was turning into a hot spot of the novel coronavirus pandemic. And the infection was spreading most rapidly among the 3,700 workers at a pork
