Coronavirus infections among staff have also been detected in three large Austrian meat processing companies. In total, twelve employees tested positive for the coronavirus, confirmed the crisis team of the state of Upper Austria to the press agency APA on Sunday.
Approximately five million pigs are produced annually in Austria. Although Austria is self-sufficient with this number, 2.5 million pigs are still imported every year from other EU countries. Two-thirds of these come from Germany. About 40 percent of these 2.5 million imported pigs go to wholesale, while the remaining 60 percent are processed in the meat industry.
The Austrian meat processing companies affected by corona are located not far from the German border. Other employees of the infected companies were still being tested on Sunday. The results are expected on Monday.
The health authority does not expect new outbreaks, according to an Austrian newspaper. Closures of companies are also not currently being considered. Minister of Agriculture Elisabeth Köstinger (ÖVP) and Minister of Health Rudolf Anschober (Greens) emphasize that the small slaughterhouses are well positioned to tackle the spread of the virus.
Most workers in the meat industry in both Germany and Austria come from abroad, but slaughterhouses are not comparable in size and turnover. The average slaughterhouse in Austria has only 400 employees. Moreover, they operate under better social legal conditions.
At the German meat processor Tönnies in North Rhine-Westphalia, more than 1,400 employees tested positive for the coronavirus in June. As a result, the region around the affected factories had to go back into lockdown. The incident caused much discussion about the working and living conditions of the often Eastern European workers who work there.
China has suspended imports from two Brazilian pork factories of the two large meat concerns JBS and BRF, due to fears of coronavirus spread. These are the BRF factory in Lajeado and a JBS factory in Tres Passos, both in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Brazil is recovering from the second largest corona outbreak in the world, behind the United States.
China is the largest buyer of Brazilian pork, beef, and chicken. It has requested that meat exporters worldwide certify that their products are coronavirus-free. Earlier, China had already suspended imports from meat processing factories in Germany, the Netherlands, and the US after coronavirus was detected among staff in those companies. In total, six Brazilian meat factories are now blocked.