OK Foods: ‘Erroneous’ State Report Led to Ban

Trent Goins of O.K. Foods in Fort Smith.

CEO Trent Goins of OK Foods in Fort Smith said the Arkansas Department of Health’s “erroneous reporting” of the number of positive coronavirus cases led to China banning imports from a company plant.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said China banned poultry products from the Fort Smith plant effective Sept. 13 because more than 200 workers tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. OK Foods is a subsidiary of Bachoco of Mexico.

China earlier banned products from the Berry Street facility of Tyson Foods Inc. for the same reason.

Goins, in a letter to the company’s customers first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, disputed the number cited by the ADH. He said the ADH reports “incorrectly inflated the number of active COVID-19 cases within one of our Fort Smith processing plants.”

ADH spokesman Gavin Lesnick said in a released statement the department erred in listing all the OK Foods’ positive tests as occurring at the one processing plant, which has three separate facilities. 

“In early September, it was brought to our attention that O.K. Foods had three separate processing facilities at one location,” the ADH statement read. “Until then, ADH had been attributing all O.K. Foods COVID-19 cases to one facility. On September 2, 2020, ADH correctly allocated O.K. Food COVID-19 cases to the appropriate facility to which they belonged. This reduced the number of cases that had been attributed to the single facility.”

A statement from Gov. Asa Hutchinson said China had assigned numbers from three facilities to one. But it said the health department had revised its reports.

“It appears that China added the case numbers for three OK Foods facilities and assigned them to one facility. The Department of Health has revised the reports to address this problem,” the governor said.

“OK Foods has been a leader in the poultry industry in making its plants safe for the workers and in assuring that all Department of Health guidelines are followed. My office, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health are working to help OK Foods in overcoming this obstacle in exporting product to China.”

A spokesman for OK Foods said the company wouldn’t comment on the situation other than what was in Goins’ letter. He did not specify which facility was affected, what poultry it produced or how much it exported to China.

“We have 0 active cases of COVID-19 with employees working at the facility in question today,” Goins said in the letter, which was undated. “In all transparency, we have had 60 active cases out of 774 employees since March in the affected plant. Additionally, OK Foods is currently in the bottom five percent of poultry plants in Arkansas reported COVID-19 cases.”

Goins thanked the governor and the ADH for correcting the error and said they were working together to get China to lift the ban.

China’s ban on products from Tyson Foods’ Berry Street plant remains in effect.