Dealing With a Virus Double Whammy

Covid-19 and swine fever slam the world’s top pork producer, China’s WH Group

- By Bruce Einhorn, with Shuping Niu and Dorota Bartyzel

As businesses around the globe buckle under the strain of Covid-19, the world’s biggest pork producer is fighting not just one highly contagious virus, but two. And the outcome could determine whether Americans will have enough hot dogs, bacon, and ham this summer.

Hong Kong-based WH Group Ltd. is struggling to cope with the virus that causes African swine fever (ASF), a deadly malady that’s devastated hog herds and helped more than double pork prices in China, while also spreading to other countries in Asia and Europe. Like Covid-19, ASF is currently incurable and researchers have yet to come up with a vaccine. China’s pork production fell 29% in the first three months of 2020; the swine disease has slashed the size of the country’s hog herd by about half.

Now the coronavirus is piling on. Smithfield Foods, the Virginia-based subsidiary of WH Group, shut three of its U.S. plants this month because of Covid-19. They include a processing facility in Sioux Falls, S.D., that accounts for about a quarter of the company’s U.S. revenue.