'Is pork essential?' In a Smithfield town, a coronavirus-plagued meat factory comes back to life
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - The sun was barely up when Yvette Nimenya kissed her three boys, stumbled downstairs and ran out the door once again for the big brick building on North Weber Avenue.
She said "no" when the guard asked if she was sick before scanning her temperature. She grabbed a mask and face shield, slipped on her white smock and hard hat and walked onto the floor of Department 19. She stood for hours within an arm's length of dozens of other refugees separated by Plexiglas, stretching polyester nets over metal tubes as they were stuffed with 18-pound hams - thousands of times a day.
"It's still not safe," said Nimenya, who bosses sent home from the Smithfield pork factory in April after a co-worker became ill - among at least 900 to catch the coronavirus in one of the worst single U.S. outbreaks. "But we have no choice. We have bills. Anybody can get sick. Including me."
Smithfield, a sprawling plant that until recently produced 5% of the nation's pork, was among the first hit by the virus that has now crippled dozens of American meat producers. When it closed, grocery stores upped prices and rationed bacon. Farmers resorted to killing livestock. President Trump declared meat factories as "critical infrastructure" to stem more shutdowns that nevertheless continued as the virus tore through cutting floors.
Workers now trickle back through factory gates in this region of
