In recent earnings calls, shareholders of some publicly traded meat companies have questioned whether the Trump administration’s expulsion plans, among other issues, could pose a challenge to their industry. “We’ve been there before. It has not had an impact on our business,” said Tim Klein, CEO of National Beef, which is owned by Brazilian food company Marfrig, in response to a shareholder question. In response to a similar question during a Tyson Foods earnings call, CEO Donnie King said: “There’s a lot we don’t know at this point, but I would like to remind you that we operate this business successfully for over 90 years. no matter which party is in charge.
It is unclear whether the Trump regime would target meatpacking facilities operated by the industry’s largest companies, given the favorable treatment those companies sometimes received during the first Trump presidency. During the Covid-19 pandemic, President Trump issued an executive order allowing plants to continue operating, even though meatpackers were among the hardest hit by infections. The U.S. House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis later discovered that Tyson’s legal department had drafted text of the proposed order.
“These large meatpacking companies have prevented additional protections from being put in place to protect workers, in part by engaging in a concerted effort with Trump administration policymakers to shield themselves from the surveillance, force workers to remain in unsafe conditions, and protect against liability for any resulting illness or death of a worker,” the committee concluded in the report released in December 2022.
Labor supply is limited at meatpacking plants and in the agricultural 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 program to include more ranchers. Smaller farms are more likely to be affected by a lack of labor, Escalante says, while larger farms might turn to mechanization.
If meat workers are evicted en masse, this could mean higher prices for consumers. A report from Texas A&M Agrilife Research estimates that eliminating immigrant labor on U.S. dairy farms would nearly double retail milk prices. It’s unclear how much impact Trump’s deportation plan would have on meat or food prices in general, as much about the plan remains unknown. “We don’t know yet how this is all going to play out,” Hubbard says.
