Shutting meat packing plant is causing shortages right now | Brad Freking

Vance Crowe [00:00:03] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast, Brad Fracking, welcome to the podcast.

Brad Freking [00:00:12] Glad to be here Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:00:13] So you are in the meat packing industry, particularly with pork and probably at the time when more people in the in the world are focused on pork production than have ever been focused on it before. Where are you and what is going on right now? Here it is, May 1st, 2020. During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Brad Freking [00:00:34] Vance, our world has been totally turned upside down, upside in all years, 25 years of raising integrated pork production. I've never, never ever dealt with situation like this, ever. I mean, through $6 corn through 8 cent pigs and 98, we have never experienced what we're experiencing today.

Vance Crowe [00:01:00] When did things start changing from being a guy that runs a business that most people don't want to talk about, don't want to think about to being, hey, things are starting to heat up. When did you start feeling the pressure from Coronavirus?

Brad Freking [00:01:14] Probably, let's call it the middle of March. From the standpoint we knew it was out there, we're having lockdown effects. We're we're deemed essential from day one because we're producing food. So from a day to day-to-day standpoint, nothing really changed for us. Everybody showed up for work because we're deemed essential because we're in the pig business and biosecurity and herd health is paramount to what we do to be successful with what we do. We've already had good biosecurity in place and our employees understand the importance about security. And what I mean by that is how to avoid viruses, how to keep 'em out of the farm. So, so it's part of our culture that

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] So you are a veterinarian and a part owner, right, in packing plant. And do you also raise hogs yourself?

Brad Freking [00:02:13] Yeah, we produce about 1.3 million annually. So people would call us an integrated pork producer. 'cause we, we have all sides of it raising the pigs to the processing facility.

Vance Crowe [00:02:27] So what is happening, everybody is saying right now, when you flip on the news that people are being forced to work in these packing plants, they're getting sick, they're dying. And this is happening in places like South Dakota where the governor was really lax on, on how much they were gonna do social distancing and whether or not they would lock it down. That's what I have seen in the news. What are you seeing from running your operations?

Brad Freking [00:02:54] So the first major plan closure was only three weeks ago. So I mean, we're, we're living this real time and so Vance, what I'll do, I'll give you our experience at our own plant and I'll start with that and then we'll move beyond that to other situations. So our facility is within the state of Missouri, St. Joseph, Missouri. And we did not have a positive employee until last week, Monday as our first positive employee. And prior to that we were doing tons of education on, hey, if you don't feel well, don't show up to work. You know, go to the doctor getting 'em the PPE, the mask, the protective gear. A lot of our people are already smocked up with gloves and coats already. But getting the masks, you know, implementing those, we implemented, when you go through some of the airports, they got those thermal screeners now where it takes your temperature. So we implemented that, spread out the cafeterias. I mean, we were doing everything physically possible that we could. But on last week, Monday, not this Monday, the week before Monday, we were notified of our first positive COVID-19 employee during the preceding few days. You know, two more, three more, that type of deal.

Brad Freking [00:04:26] The good thing about Eant, they're going to the doctor and getting tested. They weren't coming to the plant, but due to the escalation and with being arm in arm with state of Missouri and all their support and Department of health, we made the decision last Thursday to test all of our employees. So we're the first large harvest plant in the US that made the commitment to test proactively all of our employees.

Vance Crowe [00:04:57] So when you're saying testing, are you talking about the, the swab that goes all the way to the back of your nose and you gotta like hit your

Brad Freking [00:05:04] Head? Yeah, yeah. Wow. The nasal frontal swab.

Vance Crowe [00:05:08] And how did you guys possibly institute that? Did, did the state show up with tests? How did you do that?

Brad Freking [00:05:14] Yeah, so, so to make the decision on last week, Thursday to test all our employees, the state helped move heaven and earth to mobilize by Monday. By Monday. So they helped round up all the test kits, the health providers, a little bit of help from National Guard and we mobilized on site with the testing facility. And we were able from Monday through Wednesday test 2,400 people.

Vance Crowe [00:05:46] And what did you find out when you tested 2,400 people?

Brad Freking [00:05:50] So I was at the plant yesterday helping with press releases because everybody wants to know and, and we, we, we also notified our employees the first time we had a positive case, which was last week, Monday. So that, that created fear, it created some ab absenteeism, which is understandable. But the data from the first round of testing, which was about 735 tests that we got back yesterday, 92 tested positive. Now what's really interesting about this Vance, 100% of 'em were asymptomatic.

Vance Crowe [00:06:35] So did they, were they surprised? I mean, did they, what what is the look on somebody's face when they find out they're positive but they don't feel anything?

Brad Freking [00:06:43] Well, it, it, it's, it's really two, I mean we're living this right now. I mean this was yesterday at three o'clock. Okay. Yesterday at three o'clock. And so there's probably, it's taken a tremendous amount of employee education, but there's probably two responses, you know, because once we found out they're positive, we sent 'em home with masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, because they'll need to go into seven, seven day quarantine from the time they test 'em and say, Hey, you need to quarantine and be careful, but here's some masks to protect your loved ones, your families, you know, in case you're still shedding the bars. So the other side of it is, shit, I got it. I don't feel anything. I'm good to go. I don't have to worry about this anymore. 'cause it is asymptomatic simple.

Vance Crowe [00:07:40] Yeah, really big relief. Yeah, huge relief.

Brad Freking [00:07:42] A big relief. So you kinda got both sides of it. You got to employ that, you know, maybe is living with 80-year-old grandparent or parents or grandparents that are like, man, I gotta do, be really careful. And you may have somebody else that's going, I've had this no big deal.

Vance Crowe [00:08:00] So tell me about your, tell me about your workforce. Who, who, who's been coming into your work for, for years? How long have you developed this workforce? How easy is it to replace if they don't show up for work?

Brad Freking [00:08:12] Well, what happens, and this, this is part of our food supply situation that we're dealing with today. So if, if we have absenteeism, we cannot run at our normal rates. We can't harvest the same number of pigs per day. So with less people, we slow everything down and we're really producing less food. So normally we are harvesting around 21,000 a day. Wow. And we're current and we're currently at 13,000.

Vance Crowe [00:08:45] What does this do to the amount of pork available? Right. I've, I've heard people talk about that we have a certain number of days that are, you know, meat's already frozen and we're taken care of. But when does bringing that much production down? Okay,

Brad Freking [00:08:58] So, so I wanna talk about that misnomer. So most of the meat that's frozen is already sold. Oh. And most of the meat frozen is for export. The only thing we freeze is some ribs and tenderloins that we save for the spring grilling. Otherwise all that meat that you see in the frozen stocks, all that's already sold. So,

Vance Crowe [00:09:27] So what this mean for meat storage then? Like how long can you go where you're producing less than your capacity and it starts showing up in refrige in, in grocery stores

Brad Freking [00:09:37] Today.

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] Nobody's saying this. I have not heard this anywhere.

Brad Freking [00:09:42] I know, I know because So when, when you think about the retail, the grocery stores, it's all fresh. There's very little frozen pork ever in that grocery store. That supply chain is about 72 to 96 hours for freshness.

Vance Crowe [00:10:03] What?

Brad Freking [00:10:04] Yes. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:07] So, okay, so what are you seeing show up in the grocery stores? Are you hearing right now like, are you selling pork for the same price you were? How, how is all this working with pricing?

Brad Freking [00:10:17] So you ready to go a little bit of history here Vance? So, so the pork cutout, which is the value of all the pieces of the carcass, we, it's called the pork cutout value, just like box beef value. Okay? So we are clicking along at about $80 for that value. And $80 is okay, it's not great money. You're not making a lot of money, but you're okay. When COVID hit and retail shut down that value went to $50 just crashed because of food service shut down. And, and our industry is heavily dependent on food service because of further processing bacon, hams and sausages, which are highly consumed within food service. Unlike beef, you know, a steak is steak. It doesn't matter if it goes in retail or to the restaurant. And hamburgers, hamburger and a roast is a roast, they don't further process beef. So we, that's why we crashed from 80 to 50. So, and that was about two weeks ago we were at 50 cents. Okay. Today, yesterday the pork cut out hit up over a hundred. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:11:38] So does that mean that if you can produce pigs that you're doing pretty well now then if you're producing pork? If, if

Brad Freking [00:11:43] We can, we can produce. The problem is we got all these pigs in supply chain. I can't put 'em out on pasture. We're not the cattle industry, we're not the dairy industry where you can dry cow. If you don't want to dump milk dryer off, you know, they can immediately adjust their supply chain. Our problem is we have 11 months of work in progress.

Vance Crowe [00:12:08] Explain what that means for people that don't, aren't familiar with livestock or agriculture. What does that, what does it take to get a pig all the way up to, to processing?

Brad Freking [00:12:17] So by the time you breed that pig, that sour gu, it'll take about four months for herd to feral. And then then the babies will be on the mama for about three and a half weeks. And then it's about another six months for 'em to reach mark weight. So that's why we talk about 10 and a half to 11 months of work in progress.

Vance Crowe [00:12:44] And so now at a hundred dollars per or or above what's going on in your plant right now, you have people that are testing positive that it's a time to make money. There's not much storage going on in the grocery stores. So what is this all equal for you and your workers?

Brad Freking [00:13:01] So, so by voluntarily testing our workforce, what we're trying to do is create a sense of comfort for 'em to feel comfortable coming to work. And so the positives we identify 'em and remove 'em, not remove 'em, tell quarantine 'em at home for seven days and then they can come back. So it's all about making our employees feel safe. And, and that's really the goal because there's so much misinformation about this virus and it's true impact on people.

Vance Crowe [00:13:38] What is the misinformation that you're having to combat on, on with your workers or kind of in general?

Brad Freking [00:13:44] Well, if you listen to any news station, the majority of them, you're gonna die if you get it. And that's the problem. And, and the data is flaw advance, I mean on the mortality rates because they're putting it all against people that test positive. Okay. So I just shared with you out of this massive screening of 2,400 people, I don't have all the data yet, but the first third of the data says that 90% of people are asymptomatic. Okay? So if you start doing this math and you extrapolate it out, this, the mortality rate to this virus says probably like 0.1, 0.2. That's it. It's seasonal flu, that's all. It's, you're not allowed to

Vance Crowe [00:14:29] Say that. People get mad at you saying that

Brad Freking [00:14:32] I'm giving you data. I mean the data is just rolling at us this week because we're finally testing large populations of employees. And I'll give you a couple other case some points that are out there in the public domain. Remember the aircraft carrier that where they all got sick and created a lot of hoopla, a lot of those 5,000 people, sailors on that ship, 994 tested positive one died advance because you add significant asthma that equates to mortality rate of 0.1, which is less than the seasonal flu. Okay? There's two other prison systems where they've tested the entire population. In, in both those situations, once again, of the people testing positive, 90 plus percent are asymptomatic. Didn't, you know, they had it, which equates to our data. So all this data is starting to coalesce to create a, a better picture of what's actually going on in the general population with the Myers fans.

Vance Crowe [00:15:41] How has it to been to be working so closely with the state? Because, and the reason I ask is because the, the, there are some states that seem like they're locking everything down and some states that are trying to keep businesses up and running, and I don't have a perception for how Missouri is doing

Brad Freking [00:15:59] Missouri, they went through their normal lockdown, but I think they're opening up now or next week. And, and I don't know to what level, you know, I do live in the state of Minnesota, so I'm very familiar with what's going on here Vance. But, but what I will tell you, you know, our situation versus the, the Sioux Falls plant we talked about earlier you mentioned we went arm in arm with the state and we said we need your help because we want to voluntarily test our employees and we're gonna need your help for us to do that. So we've been working hand in hand with their support and they've been giving us the guidance for our facility because it's your local health authority along with your state that ultimately provides the guidance for these facilities. And in, in essence they have authority to shut you down. And, and because of the fear and the lack of understanding around this Meyers, I mean the media response is, well, I'm gonna shut you down. You got positives, I'm shutting you down. Well here's the problem with shutdown bans without testing, okay, you shut everything down, you bring everybody back to work two weeks later, what's changed without testing n nothing's, you're gonna end up in the same situation.

Vance Crowe [00:17:26] So are you worried about liability with, if your workers come in and they contract the disease and people say, well they got it at work and therefore you're responsible for, for their medical care.

Brad Freking [00:17:37] So that's the other huge misnomer about these plants. They're not getting it in the plants, they're getting it in the communities that they live in. I mean, because they're coming in, we're temping 'em, they got face masks, PPI mean, then they go home, they go shopping, they go hang out. That's where it's spreading bands. It's not in the plants, it's in the community where they live. And that,

Vance Crowe [00:18:07] You know, you have an interesting background, particularly with a term that is being thrown around all over the place. Right? People talk about herd immunity and what will it take to get herd immunity? And my understanding not just of livestock, but particularly with pigs or being a veterinarian, you have to understand herd immunity for other diseases. You've faced a lot of diseases that have impacted pigs. What should people know about this term? Herd immunity. What does it really mean when you look at it from a veterinarian standpoint?

Brad Freking [00:18:37] So herd immunity as it pertains specifically to this Mars, it's basically enough people going positive that it snuffs the virus out. It no no longer has a source to replicate. And normally that's around 60 to 70% of the population being positive and the virus will burn out on its own. That that's herd immunity as they're talking about it on the national press for humans. And same is similar in our, our south farms that we monitor and measure.

Vance Crowe [00:19:19] And so you've had to deal with, with an epidemic inside of pigs before, I assume if you've been asking

Brad Freking [00:19:25] Oh, absolutely. We deal with it all the time advances.

Vance Crowe [00:19:27] So what do you know as somebody that's been dealing with epidemics within animals for a long time, what, what we can take away from what humans should be thinking about this as

Brad Freking [00:19:37] Well. The first thing you have to have testing the access to testing and, and there's two different types of tests that they talk about today that, that confuse a lot of people. So the testing we're using right now is what they call the PCR test Test Preliminary

Vance Crowe [00:19:57] Chain reaction. Yeah, the,

Brad Freking [00:19:59] I was, I had to think a little bit there in PCR. So so what that does it, it identifies little fragments of RNA that this virus leaves beyond. And so it including dead virus. So you could have had the virus developed, antibodies stopped producing the VI virus in your body. IE cleared the virus, but you may still test positive because you have dead virus being shed from your cells. So, so there's really three phases of that PCR positive test. I could be preclinical, I, I got the virus but I haven't developed symptoms yet. And those symptoms should, if you test positive and you're pre-symptomatic within two days, either you got systems or symptoms or you're immune to it, it's not bothering you. The second bucket is I test positive with no symptoms and I have no symptoms going forward. You're asymptomatic. The third one is, I've already cleared it, but I'm just shedding dead bars. You, and we don't know that what that test, but those are the three buckets that you'll be in. But you'll know within 48 hours whether you're asymptomatic.

Vance Crowe [00:21:30] So it's gotta be like lifting the veil on like how many people have it, what's going on here, how have your overall employees reacted? Do they wanna be at work? Do they, are they resenting that you're asking them to come in and do it? Like I hear all kinds of different reports,

Brad Freking [00:21:47] They're different people respond differently and different people have different situations at home. Are they living with their grandma? You know, do they have an 85-year-old grandpa at home? You know, people are petrified for the kids. What I'm telling the advance look at the data, these kids are either immune or they've already seen the virus due to being in school because there are no kids testing positive hardly anywhere on the planet. And for sure none of 'em are getting deathly sick and dying. So something's going on with their kids. You know, either, either the virus doesn't affect them or they're already immune to it because the common cold it part of that complex is four coronaviruses that continue to circulate. So maybe those coronaviruses are providing the kids with immunity. So I mean that, that's the thing with this. I wish we attest a big population of kids so they can get on with their lives and that helped mom and dad get on with their lives because they're scared about their kit.

Vance Crowe [00:23:01] What are you being asked to do at the plant right now as far as for health concerns? And what do you think are the good precautions and what do you think are maybe over the top, if anything?

Brad Freking [00:23:12] So, so the one we're working with today, because this is about your future food availability within the US and we talk about social distancing. So why did we implement social distancing vans? We had no face masks. We had no PPE, it all needed to go to the essential workers. I frontline the doctors and nurses and EMTs. Well now that we got face masks being required, why do we need social distancing? You don't need 'em both, you know, pick one or the other. So if you're walking around with a mask, I don't need stays six way feet away from everybody if I got a mask on. 'cause the mask is preventing the shed of the virus.

Vance Crowe [00:24:05] Nobody's saying this, I have not heard anybody say this and you're right, it's I logical. Yeah,

Brad Freking [00:24:10] Because we didn't have the PPE to begin with. So they implemented social distancing. Now that we got the PPE, you don't need to do both because, well, one of the battles that we're having with certain oversight individuals is, well we want you to social distance in the plant. You know, we cannot breaks and on breaks, but these plants are in a building, okay? And the lines are set up at X amount of spacing, normally three foot for each employee. Well if we gotta implement social spacing, which isn't required with plants, with masks and gloves and face shields, it makes no sense. What I'm telling you, if, if it gets implemented, your production goes down to 60% of what it was. That means a lot of people will not have meat.

Vance Crowe [00:25:10] I I think that one of the things that strikes me about what's going on right now is people have no concept for what a meat packing plant looks like. The closest they've come is Upton Sinclair's the jungle and that and that, which was never like, so for people that don't know, Upton Sinclair was a socialist. He wanted to write a novel about how difficult the working conditions were. So he wrote this book about meatpacking and instead of capturing people's ideological minds for politics, he hit them in the stomach and got them to say, terrible things are going on here. So the only image that most Americans have of meat packing plants is that they're these terrible places. Whereas I've been to, I've never been to a pork one, but I've been to a cattle one and they are surgery level clean. They are, yeah. Well they

Brad Freking [00:25:56] Have to be.

Vance Crowe [00:25:57] Yeah.

Brad Freking [00:25:57] So every night what, what everybody under needs to understand the USDA allows us to operate beyond the health issues that we're dealing with with COVID today. But the USDA, we have to wash and perfectly clean that facility every day, every evening. So we run an A shift, B shift production C shift is clean up every day. And then we gotta go and swab, take bacterial counts to prove to the USDA that we can start the plan up the next day. It is crystal, it's, I won't say it's cleaner than a hospital, but it's on par.

Vance Crowe [00:26:40] Yeah. I was one time in a plant where the, where the, the owner or one of the owners of the plant said I would eat a four course meal off of the floor in here after we're done cleaning it up. And it, it was like, that's a amazing, so what are you thinking right now is going to happen to the food chain? Is is this gonna get solved? Hey, the, the state's working and the order to, to allow workers to come back. What do you think is gonna happen?

Brad Freking [00:27:06] Well, we will be short on meat. I mean that, that's already in the cards. The, the cattle sign and the pork sign are, are harvesting at about 60% capacity today advance. So I mean that means we have a shortage coming with fresh meat there. There's no way around it. I mean that cards are already been dealt.

Vance Crowe [00:27:31] The, the thing that I think most people don't realize in the United States, because we've been inundated constantly with like how great a plant-based diet is and vegan is that people don't realize that the calories, you know, we have a certain number of calories that humans in the United States need. And if you cut out meat, the, which is the super high density calorie access, if you cut part of that out, you still need those calories for human beings. You can't just flip it over and start eating carrots because the volume to calorie ratio is nowhere near where it would need to be. And so my question becomes, at what point does the meat shortage go from being like, hey, the having bacon and kind of these meats that we like just aren't around to, we have an actual calorie shortage.

Brad Freking [00:28:21] It, it depends on how quickly we can educate people that these facilities are actually a safe environment to work in. And and that's gonna be our challenge over the next seven days, Vance, because I'll give you some other, so now other plants are testing, we're not the only ones now, thank goodness. And I'm starting to see those results and, and it's looking very similar where 90% of the individuals that test positive are asymptomatic. So they got it, got it at home, whatever, no problem whatsoever. You're good to go, you're immune, come back to work. The other thing that's interesting because we're, as a rule of thumb, I mean it's hard working these plants, I mean it, it's not a lounge chair job. I mean they're, they're working hard. So as a rule of thumb, we have a pretty healthy population. When you think about it overall, I mean because you gotta be fit or it's strenuous work. What is

Vance Crowe [00:29:27] The work that they're doing inside of a packing plant? D describe it.

Brad Freking [00:29:30] Yeah, it, it's all the way from somebody with a knife making cuts of meat to packaging, to shipping, to running forklifts, to loading trucks. I mean, so it's a little bit to running robots. So all Can

Vance Crowe [00:29:47] I zoom the camera lens back? So like for people that don't know, pigs have to show up to your facility and they show up live, they walk off of the truck and they go in and they're killed presumably as one of the first steps, right?

Brad Freking [00:30:00] Yep. And so we use a CO2 stunning, which everybody agrees as the most humane way to put the animal down. And then their first step is we bleed 'em when, you know, obviously they're unconscious, but you gotta get the blood out of the carcass for meat quality. And then you go through the process of de hering 'em and then removing the internal, you know, the heart, lung and the guts and then they go through a snapshot and all that up to that point only takes about five minutes because the quicker you take the animal, harvest it and get it into the equilibration coolers, the better meat quality. So then it sits in there overnight for about 24 hours and then it cut comes down on what we call the cut floor, the fabrication floor. And that's where you create all the different parts and pieces.

Vance Crowe [00:31:01] And that's what's going on with the conveyor belts is that parts of the pig are moving by and one person is responsible for, I get this cut off the meat and then as it goes further down, somebody gets another cutoff. And so what you're saying, what you're describing as far as I can tell is that if you start separating these people out so far that the conveyor belts and the timing that they need to pick that piece up, get their cut, take it off, starts to get messed up and, and you guys are finally tuned to this. So that messing it up messes a whole bunch of other things up.

Brad Freking [00:31:31] Oh yeah. I mean, so think about it as simply as this, if if I gotta spread people out on those lines, which are within a brick and mortar building, so I have no more room. So that means I gotta remove half my workforce. So instead of running at 1400 carcasses per hour, I'm down to 700, I'm at 50% capacity. And that's what you're gonna tell me that this country is gonna produce food meat at 50% the historical capacity.

Vance Crowe [00:32:06] Well, and

Brad Freking [00:32:06] That's problem Vance. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:32:08] And, and the, especially

Brad Freking [00:32:09] When we got masks and all the protective gear for our employees now we, we don't need that social distancing. You know, we started that politically because we didn't have the equipment. Now that we got the PPE, we don't need the social distancing. That just makes common sense.

Vance Crowe [00:32:26] I think people right now are struggling. Many of them are sitting at home and they want to do good and they want to support good. And the only side that they're hearing is that these evil meat packers are going to force people at gunpoint or through some sort of military order that they have to go back to work. And so they are sitting at their computer saying, Hey, I wanna support these workers that are being forced to work. How do you think they should perceive this? Or what would be another angle for them to understand what's going on besides just the fact that meat is going to go up.

Brad Freking [00:33:02] So point number one, they're not forced to work. Nobody's out there with guns rounding them up, bringing them in chains to the plant. It is voluntary if they show up for work, but they are deemed essential. And so therefore they don't have the windfall payments coming from the government on unemployment. Well, which eventually is gonna hurt our economy because people won't wanna go back to work because as making more not working vans. So I mean that's an issue down the road here once things get normalized. But but these people, I mean they got a choice if they want to come to work or not. I mean we can't force 'em. So our job is to provide 'em with the safe, safest environment we possibly can. And that's why we agreed to voluntarily test everybody. Now that the results are coming in, it's gonna be a continuous education process advance because I'm gonna go through our numbers and our 2,400 employee plant, which are just coming out, the first press release was yesterday at three o'clock. So what we've seen is only one and a half percent of all of our employees have seen clinical signs and went to the doctor and got tested positive. So one and a half percent of all our employees actually had symptomatic signs. Okay. Of that one and a half percent, only three of those people ended up in the hospital.

Brad Freking [00:34:39] Okay. With mild symptoms to COVID, two of 'em are released. And the third one I think is being released today. Nobody's dying is what I'm

Vance Crowe [00:34:50] Saying. And would that have happened during the flu season? Would you have had a couple? It would've been worse really.

Brad Freking [00:34:54] It probably would've been worse. So, or as worse.

Vance Crowe [00:34:58] So if you were asking the public right now that's hearing you talk about this and they say, okay, I take what Brad is saying seriously and I'm, I wanna help, what do you think they should be doing to help? Should they be running out and stacking up pork and bacon and or calling a senator? Or what should they do?

Brad Freking [00:35:17] Well number one is probably calling their legislators and say, Hey, you need to help support these guys what they're testing and help educate the public with truth, not the stuff that's coming out of the East coast. I mean these, these are the first big population centers to be tested are workforces to be tested in the, except for the US carrier. Now you got the destroyer in prisons. This is gq working public, being mass tested. Okay. And I think this will become potentially a protocol for other large employers to use on a go forward basis. Somehow, somewhere advance testing will be part, I think of your ongoing processes for your employees to reopen the economy if you have a large confined workforce.

Vance Crowe [00:36:16] Brad, you're a seasoned guy, you've been around for a while, you're a little bit older on the age gradient. Are you worried about getting the disease?

Brad Freking [00:36:24] No.

Vance Crowe [00:36:25] Why not?

Brad Freking [00:36:25] I think I already have it. Really

Vance Crowe [00:36:27] Had

Brad Freking [00:36:27] It. My boys, I think two of my sons had it. That's why I'm waiting for the Eliza or the serology test, which is the antibody test everybody keeps talking about. That'll tell you if you've had it. My son Thomas got sick in December, took him to the hospital. They said, well you got a virus. So it's not influenza and he's a wrestler. So look at them kids grappling, I mean, oh

Vance Crowe [00:36:54] Yeah, I do jujitsu. Like it is like you are sharing sweat and spit and everything else with these guys. Yeah.

Brad Freking [00:37:00] And then my oldest son Benjamin, who goes to Iowa State and engineering, basically when everybody came back from Christmas break, he's in engineering. So there was a lot of Asian students when he came back for, from after Christmas break, the entire college gets sick. I mean, everybody gets sick. So, but you think about the timeline on this man, I think California has already gone through it because if you look at CDC data, they said California had an early flu season. Well, they didn't have early flu. They're, they're going through Corona. 'cause think about your first point of stop. If you're coming from China, you're coming into California, San

Vance Crowe [00:37:44] Francisco or Los Angeles. I mean, you're saying the kind of thing that gets you booted off YouTube, I can tell you that that's, that's not like that. Very so, so I what do you think is gonna, the world is gonna look like in two weeks,

Brad Freking [00:38:01] Hopefully as these other states open up in all of our data is now, and a lot of other data is saying 90% are asymptomatic. So as these states open up and people go get back to normal, you will have this 10% that shows symptoms. Okay? And of those 10%, 1% or you know, 10% of those or 1% of the overall may end up go going to the hospital. Now what I do know, you don't put sick patients like Como did in nursing homes. They are the susceptible population that we gotta care for and protect. I mean, the state of Minnesota ants, 99.28% of the mortality are the deaths in the state of Minnesota come from nursing homes. So we're doing it. So protect our nursing homes, don't kill us in the economy.

Vance Crowe [00:39:01] So let's talk about what happens to the animals that you can't harvest. So if you go down to 60% or 50%, those pigs are still growing up, they're still coming, maturing. You can't just go put 'em out in a pasture or keep feeding 'em because you've got other cow or other pigs that are, that are growing up, what happens to those ex extra pigs or the pigs that can't be processed?

Brad Freking [00:39:24] So in our region right here, southwest Minnesota, so you mentioned the morale planter earlier, that's been closed going on three weeks now. Unfortunately, the JBS plant closed not this Monday, the Monday before. So our region lost almost all of its harvest capabilities. So there pigs B and d depopulated today, advance euthanized that that need to be food, but they're not.

Vance Crowe [00:39:58] What does that look like if people are, I, I don't mean to be graphic, but I want people to understand what it means for, for a farmer that had pigs that can't get them harvested.

Brad Freking [00:40:09] It's economic devastation. I mean, and beyond the emotional toll. I mean, you care for these animals for six months, you know, trying to keep everybody health as healthy as you can. And now you get 'em to the point to finally achieve, you know, the reward of my last six months and I don't have a home for him and I euthanize them. I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:40:36] Yeah, I, I was talking with a guy who was saying that he was gonna have to help drive trucks to where the, they would do the killing of the pigs and burying them. And he was describing it as being a part of a war or something. Like, you don't normally kill these animals so that they're just dead. You, you kill them to process them. And it's a, it's a spiritual, hey, I understand they're a part of the circle of life, but if you're putting them down and just burying them, it's traumatic for the farmer and for anybody that's watching it,

Brad Freking [00:41:07] For anybody that's involved in the process. So, I mean, and I'll give you the situation. Let's talk about John Morrell and JBS plants for just second advance. So what's crazy to me and what the, the politicians and the officials aren't thinking about, well, if I've been shut down two, three weeks already and 50% of my population has tested positive, but they're all asymptomatic or 90% of 'em on, why can't the healthy ones go back to work? They ain't gonna get it again. You know, and the easy way to do this is, you know, put those people on b shift because then I wash my plant every single night and my people that aren't, that are still negative, put 'em on a shift. You can, you can do this. But people just, they're not, they're not human doctors only think about individual medicine. They don't understand the epidemiology of the community and how to segregate people like we do all the time with our farms and animals. I mean, we know how to do this and you know, whether it's a strategic depopulation of positive animals in a south farm because we're getting rid of this disease or we're trying to create herd immunity within that farm. I mean, we understand this, but, but, but I'd make the argument today that these plants can be running at some capacity because all these big portion of these workers are already positive.

Brad Freking [00:42:47] They're immune. They went through it.

Vance Crowe [00:42:51] It's, it is going

Brad Freking [00:42:52] And nobody died.

Vance Crowe [00:42:53] It is going to be absolutely fascinating to see when the dam breaks and what what it requires because we have to go to work at some point. And if you have people saying, no, no, no, no, just keep it shut for a little while longer, they don't understand that. Not just every week that we stay shut down, problems are happening. Not even just every day. It's every hour, every minute that we stay closed, we are losing the many of the things that make this country run. And eventually the gears start seizing up and you can't get 'em to run, turn back on.

Brad Freking [00:43:23] When I make the argument advance and Oregon came out with the data earlier in this week, more people are dying because of the closures, because they're not doing their surgeries, they're not doing their cancer treatments, they're not being screened for this, there's no healthcare. They're staying away. So Oregon actually came out, or I don't know, I can't remember exactly who it was or which study. And they're actually looking at their mortality now on a weekly basis. Say, shoot, I got more people dying from other normal health issues because I got my entire healthcare shut down than I do from COVID than I mean the, the, the, the cure is killing us, literally.

Vance Crowe [00:44:09] Well, Brad, I am grateful that you guys were willing to come on and talk so openly and candidly about what's going on. I I definitely am your biggest fan. You know, I, I was just, I was just acquainted with pork jowl and I came to realize that this is the greatest form of bacon that no one had ever told me about.

Brad Freking [00:44:30] No, it's really good. I mean, it, it's, yeah, pork jowl, if you can find it and somebody will do it properly for you, it's wonderful.

Vance Crowe [00:44:38] Oh, I have a cast iron skillet and I do it slow. It takes me about 20 minutes to get it all the way through. It's wonderful. But I, I gotta say, man, like it's work like you, the workers that you have, the people that are around you that are actually keeping the country going when other people are privileged enough like me to be able to avoid and shelter and stay at home with my wife. So I am deeply grateful and I'm happy to do anything we can to make sure that your perspective is getting out so people understand what it's like on the inside of a, of a pork packing plant.

Brad Freking [00:45:10] I, I appreciate that van. And the biggest take home message, once they do larger population testing, all of a sudden the real mortality rate's gonna come out on the general population and it's gonna be a 0.1 0.2% mortality, which is the normal flu. So are we gonna shut down for the flu every year advance?

Vance Crowe [00:45:33] God, I hope not.

Brad Freking [00:45:35] Well, we have never, I mean, when, when H one N one came through with President Obama, I mean that, that was about a 0.15, 0.2%. He, nothing was done, but we didn't do what we're doing today. I mean, he let it roll through.

Vance Crowe [00:45:52] So if people wanted to reach out to you, hear how you're working on your, your production facility Sure. Learn from you. How could they do that?

Brad Freking [00:45:59] They could email me or We got a lot of security on your email system, so I don't mind giving out my cell phone.

Vance Crowe [00:46:07] Why don't you give out your email. It's the easiest way for people to, to send to you. What is that?

Brad Freking [00:46:12] It is BW Freking, F-R-E-K-I-N-G at N-F-P-I-N c.com.

Vance Crowe [00:46:24] I will put that in the show notes so anybody can grab it. Brad, thank you so much. I know you got a busy, busy day of work ahead of you. Thanks for hopping on here and come back in a couple weeks and let me know how things have turned out.

Brad Freking [00:46:35] Absolutely. Thanks. We love, love to give you an update. Great.

Vance Crowe [00:46:37] Thanks so much, Brad. All right,

Brad Freking [00:46:39] Take care.