The biggest thing Pennsylvania can do to help improve the food supply chain after the coronavirus pandemic is to bolster independent restaurants and help them thrive again, the head of Hatfield meats told a panel of state Democratic senators Thursday.
“They need your help, your support. They need aggressive state and local practices. They need to be open. They got to stay open,” said Brad Clemens, senior vice president of Montgomery County-based Clemens Food Group, more commonly known as Hatfield Meats.
The hearing focused on building a resilient food chain after the disruption from the coronavirus. It was held via Zoom by Democratic senators Lisa Boscola, Northhampton and Lehigh counties, Maria Collett, Montgomery and Bucks counties, and Judy Schwank, Berks County.
“The biggest thing to help anyone in the meat space is to help the food service sector,” Clemens said. “The best way to help us now is to help our customers.”
Hatfield is the largest hog owner in the state and runs two of its largest meat processing facilities.
“We are in that vertically coordinated model,” Clemens said. “Clemens was pushed right up to the breaking point through COVID. We don’t think it broke us, but it got close.”
Even in states that opened up ahead of Pennsylvania, restaurants are struggling to stay open under social distancing guidelines that allow just 50 percent capacity.
When it came to worker safety, Clemens said, “We felt like we were on our own.”
The company procured its own antibody testing, he said.
Berks County farmers Karah and Ben Davies also spoke about the need to support independent restaurants and to focus policy on regionally self-reliant food chains. Prior to the coronavirus, the couple’s Wild Fox Farm near Barto supplied several restaurants in the Philadelphia region, developing friendships and understanding of their practices. Some restaurants now face starting from scratch, even after being successful for many years.
“It’s easy to take for granted how catastrophic this was for them,” Ben Davies said.
While Wild Fox was able to pivot to direct sales to customers and have its best sales in a decade, Ben Davies said not all farms were able to do that. And the small meat processors they work with are overwhelmed. They urged the state to increase capacity for meat processing.
“I’m on the waiting list for four different butchers,” Davies said.
Davies said the focus on regional reliance is not always the forefront of policy, but it holds the answer for resilience. He said the state could incentivize businesses that make concerted efforts to support local food producers and/or that market their products locally. Mentorship programs and food safety plans help, and education could help bolster regional farm workforce.
He said the state should find ways to support regional food hubs, storage facilities and processors, among other ideas.
The two-hour hearing surveyed the impact of the coronavirus on the food supply chain in Pennsylvania. Senators heard from experts in technology and economics from Penn State as well. Key areas participants urged legislators to look at to improve were workforce safety, increasing meat-processing capacity and diversifying farms.
The experts described a food supply chain that is not one chain but different tracks of processing, packaging and labeling for different marketplaces, institutional and retail. When the pandemic shut down most wholesale buyers like schools and amusement parks, it was very difficult for processors and suppliers to switch tracks quickly, the experts testified. Laws that govern labeling and systems for packaging for retail differ from institutional processing. The disruption also affected how food banks were able to access food at a time when they were seeing a 50 percent increase in need.
Darrin Youker, director state government affairs of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, urged support of House Bill 2435, which would create a grant program for personal protective equipment for processing plants. He also said farmers need to be able to diversify because the farms that are doing OK are the ones that have a direct-to-consumer component.
Agriculture Secretary Russell C. Redding said he marveled at how the state’s food industry adjusted and shifted to meet the challenges of the coronavirus.
“One area that remains a critical focus is workforce,” Redding wrote in submitted testimony. “The Wolf Administration will continue to support the food supply chain through worker safety measures, such as the PPE Reimbursement Program. This program makes $280,000 available to Pennsylvania’s poultry, swine, lamb, goat, and sheep processors to reimburse costs associated with the purchase of personal protective equipment for their workforce through the Center for Poultry and Livestock Excellence, a result of Governor Tom Wolf’s 2019 Pennsylvania Farm Bill.”
Redding said additionally, the Center for Dairy Excellence recently announced the availability of up to $100,000 in grants to cover PPE and other COVID mitigation expenses. The Center for Dairy Excellence also purchased about $5,000 in masks that were distributed to hauling companies and processors earlier during the pandemic and covered material costs for volunteers to make cloth masks for farms.
The Department of Agriculture is working with the Department of Health to provide access to testing, screenings and guidance for agriculture employees who work in high risk areas. The state is also surveying the food industry to monitor operations and identify unmet needs.
To see the whole hearing go to: www.senatorschwank.com/video
