Tyson Foods is currently placing an emphasis on testing and developing automated tools for its production line, according to The Wall Street Journal. This comes as meat processing plants have emerged as hotspots during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tyson's Manufacturing Automation Center opened in August 2019 near the company's headquarters in Springdale, AK. The center has been focused on developing automation and robotics for the company line in order to help improve efficiency and workplace safety, something that has only become more important in recent months. They are specifically working on an automated deboning system for chicken.
Though these innovations are not quite up to the standards set by human production yet, the company has invested $500 million into technology and automation efforts over the last three years in hopes of improving them. These efforts to create and implement so-called "robot butchers" appear to be speeding up, according to WSJ, and Tyson Chief Executive Noel White told the outlet that the company's automation program would likely be even more important as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.
Obviously talks of automation in this sphere aren't new, but as WSJ points out, they seem to have gotten a new urgency as meat processing plants appeared as hotspots of COVID-19 cases. The CDC estimates that 16,233 workers at meat processing plants across companies in 23 states contracted COVID-19 in April and May, with 86 deaths. Safety concerns along with plant shutdowns created a bottleneck which has caused many stores and restaurants to see shortage in the meat supply and increased prices. In April, John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, published a letter saying that the "food supply is breaking" amid COVID-19.
While some are worried that automation will take away jobs from humans, Tyson's president Dean Banks stressed that the this would not happen on a large scale any time soon, saying that anyone whose job has been automated would simply be placed elsewhere and that hopefully implementing more automated systems will make employees' jobs less strenuous. And it's not just Tyson that is thinking about automation. Decker Walker, a managing director with Boston Consulting Group, told WSJ that "everybody" is thinking about adding automation into meat processing plants and that its presence will only increase. JBS, one of Tyson's biggest competitors, also spoke upon its own automation efforts in the piece.
"They are much closer to what the person can do than seven years ago. One day we will be there, but we are not there yet," said Andre Nogueira, CEO of JBS, which owns a majority of Pilgrim's Pride Inc.
