Thursday, June 25, 2015
About nine million turkeys and more than 100 farms have been lost.
As the state recovers, some cities are feeling the economic impact of the outbreak.
Jennie-O Turkey Store in Faribault is just one business in the city, but when it was forced to lay off hundreds of workers in May, the impact extended far beyond Jennie-O.
“It is scary to be under that kind of stress on a day-to-day basis,” Bio Wood Processing co-owner Kim Halvorson said.
Bio Wood Processing depends on Jennie-O. They turn wood into turkey bedding. When the turkey processor stopped ordering their product, Bio Wood felt it in their pocketbooks. So far they have lost over $100,000.
“When you kind of go from that to nothing, it hurts,” co-owner Joe Barna said.
And Bio Wood has company. According to Faribault’s Economic Development Authority and the University of Minnesota Extension, the city is expected to see a loss of more than $78 million in output sales, and more than $16 million in labor income. That is based on annual numbers if the layoffs continue.
Jennie-O’s layoffs have hit Faribault’s Somali community especially hard.
“That was my first job since I moved to the United States,” former Jennie-O employee Abdi Fatah said.
Fatah was one of more than 200 Jennie-O workers laid off in May. Many of the laid-off workers are Somali immigrants.
He is hoping to be hired back, but until then he is helping out at the Halal Market, which has also indirectly become a victim of the bird flu.
As a result of the layoffs, business is down 20 percent at the market as fewer customers are coming in.
“Because of the layoff a lot of people don’t come right now,” Fatah said. “Most of them, they move out, they go to look to other places for job.”
Fatah says a lot of former employees have moved to Minneapolis or out of state to find a job.
Jennie-O is hoping to rehire some of the workers that have been laid off, but there is no timetable on when that might happen.