Tyson Foods announced Monday it would permanently close its Iowa pork plant, which will lay off over 1,200 workers.

“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close our Perry, Iowa, pork facility,” a company spokesman told USA Today in an email.

The announcement reportedly was unexpected, with workers learning of the planned closure on Monday.

“The move comes after the Arkansas-based company closed two chicken plants and announced job cuts last year and said four other plants were expected to cease operations within the first half of fiscal 2024, with related charges − at the time, expected to cost the company $300 million to $400 million,” USA Today reports.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the closure is a “great big punch to the gut” to the community.

Per USA Today:

The small city of Perry is in Dallas County, about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines. Its population was just over 7,800 people at the time of the 2020 Census.

Tyson said it will encourage workers there to apply for other positions within the company as it still employs 9,000 people in Iowa, and it has pork facilities in Waterloo, Storm Lake and Columbus Junction.

The outlet reported that the plant’s closure will impact 1,276 workers.

From the Des Moines Register:

The plant closure, slated for June 28, is “another great big punch to the gut,” said Grassley, adding that the town has struggled with “murders, drownings and other problems.” Among them: Nearly four years ago a Perry student drowned the weekend before she was to graduate from high school.

Grassley said he hadn’t heard why the Arkansas company closed the plant or what it plans to do to help laid-off workers and the roughly 340 hog producers who have to find a new processor.

“I want people to know that if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll be glad to do it,” he said. “But I think that probably on most of this economic development stuff, the state takes the lead.”

He said he hoped the jobs can be replaced soon. “I want to stay on top of it, because Perry is hurting.”

Grassley said he supports the Biden administration’s efforts to increase competition in the meatpacking industry, pointing to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture rule that gives livestock producers stronger protections against deceptive contracts and retaliatory tactics from meatpackers.

The USDA, led by former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, also has been awarding grants to independent meat processing startups to add competition to the highly concentrated meatpacking industry. Last year, the agency announced an Iowa company would receive a $25 million grant to build a $450 million beef processing plant in western Iowa.

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