The meat is safe, the employees might not be; that’s the message from meat packers across the country as they scramble to remain open and keep employees safe.

“The health of our team is absolutely critical,” said Jarrod Gillig, the vice president of operations for Cargill Meat Solutions, which operates a 2,100-employee plant in Fort Morgan. “We’ve got a large group of folks there who are working diligently every day to make sure they can put food on the table for people across North America, and quite frankly, the world with many of our products.”

He said Cargill “continues to take a lot of pride” in its food safety, and the food shortage threat could eventually be a problem, but so far so good. Empty shelves have been the product of panic buying, as producers work on new ways of ensuring food can get from farms to tables.

Coronavirus is not a food-borne illness, but meat plants typically have featured workers almost elbow-to-elbow butchering and preparing meat for a hungry globe, and the illness has shaken public faith in the health and perhaps steady supply to grocers, restaurants and others who feed people.

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“The supply chain continues to work, though we’re clearly at a reduced rate,” Gillig said, declining to predict how long the supply chain can hold out if the national outbreak get worse instead of better.

The company, like others, is figuring out how to screen its workers for elevated temperature, provide social distancing by adjusting shifts and spacing inside the plant, plus physical partitions between employees.

Cargill scaled back operations at its Fort Morgan plant from two shifts to one on April 16 after finding that as many as 18 employees were sick and one had died. The number has since grown to 23.

“There’s no doubt it’s stressful and different,” Gillig told Colorado Politics Friday.

Dozens of meatpacking plants across the country are under threat of the illness, and a joint investigation by USA TODAY and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting this week indicated things could get worse.

The report found that more than 150 of country’s largest slaughterhouses are in counties where coronavirus cases are already among the highest in the country, accounting for perhaps one-third of the nation’s beef, pork and poultry production.

The Swift Beef Co. plant in Weld County and Cargill in Morgan County were cited in the analysis, which you can read by clicking here.

The Weld County Department of Health reported Thursday that there have been 1,263 confirmed local cases and 82 deaths tied to the virus since March 13, once of the highest rates of infection in the state. Neighboring Morgan County has had 214 confirmed cases and eight deaths.

As of Thursday, Colorado has had 11,262 confirmed cases and 552 deaths from 56 of the state’s 64 counties.

The JBS USA plant in Greeley has been the site of more than 100 confirmed cases and three deaths among its more than 6,000 employees. The plant suspended most of its Colorado operations on April 9 and reopened Thursday.

“We believe our partnership with the CDC, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the (Weld County health department) has enhanced our prevention protocols and will give our team members confidence to safely return to work,” said Chris Gaddis, the head of human resources for JBS USA.

The company said it has continued to pay its Greeley workers and stayed in touch with them via phone calls, emails and text message to monitor their health and offer tips. Masks have been required for everyone at the Greeley plant since April 2, according to JBS. The company also has expanded its space with tents to allow for more social distancing, it said.

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JBS noted that there were 275 cases reported in Weld County after the plant closed. 

Besides employees at its Fort Morgan plant, among 39 domestic facilities, Cargill has about 160,000 workers in 70 countries.

On Monday, Cargill announced it would temporarily close its beef plant in High River in Alberta in Canada, because of the COVID-19 outbreak, after the local chief medical officer announced there were 484 cases of the coronavirus in the province tied to the Cargill plant, including 360 workers. One worker at the plant died.

Cargill officials on Wednesday reported a confirmed coronavirus case at a plant in Friona, Texas, and moved back to prevent an outbreak, including measures on testing, face masks, social distancing, stepped-up cleaning and enforcing 14-day quarantine protocols.

Employees also have received bumps in wages as a bonus because of the health risks.

The JBS meat packing plant in Greeley reopened Thursday after shutting down from a deadly outbreak, killing at least three workers. The JBS plant is one of the state’s largest employers and one of the largest protein producers in the world.

The Trump administration last week announced a $19 billion program to help agriculture sector by distributing food to families in need, including buying $3 billion in dairy, produce and meat for food banks on top of about $16 billion in direct payments to farmers and ranchers.

The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package that passed last month included $9.5 billion in assistance to agricultural producers plus $14 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Corp.

Cargill also is putting its money to work. On April 16, Cargill has pledged $35 million to COVID-19 relief and recovery, including providing 16 million meals to feed an estimated 150,000 families across 16 cities in India.

The company also has donated $1 million to World Food Program USA to fight global hunger and work and support school meal programs, as well as $1 million to Minnesota Central Kitchen for emergency food relief while turning its cafeteria in its Minneapolis headquarters to a preparation site for 5,000 meals a week.

 Cargill has been in the unflattering spotlight in Colorado before.

In 2018, the company agreed to pay $1.5 million out of court to settle religious discrimination by 138 people who walked out of the Fort Morgan plant in 2015.

The Denver office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found in 2017 “reasonable cause to believe Somali, African and Muslim employees were harassed, denied their requests for prayer breaks, and fired,” according to a EEOC.