RUSH: This is Irene, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I’m glad you called. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, ma’am.

CALLER: Mega prayers to you and for the country and for our president.

RUSH: Thank you very much. I’m honored to be included in that. Thank you.

CALLER: I want to talk to you about the American farmer. Now, I’m not an expert. My son is a farmer, so I just see what’s going on locally here. The hog processing plant in Sioux Falls is closed. They process 20,000 hogs a day. They’ve tentatively closed —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You are sugarcoating this. For you leftists out there, that means they slaughter 20,000 hogs a day. Okay.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Continue.

CALLER: Yep. And they slaughter those hogs, they make ’em into pork chops, they make ’em into bacon and so that the American people can eat.

RUSH: Don’t forget pork roast.

CALLER: Yep. All kinds of stuff.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: All things people recognize.

RUSH: Chitlins, pork bellies, any number of delicacies, yes.

CALLER: Yep. So they’ve tentatively closed for two weeks. Well, there are hundreds of —

RUSH: Wait. The pig slaughterhouse is closed for two weeks?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Tentatively for two weeks, meaning it may be longer than that?

CALLER: Yes, sir. It may be longer. It started out two weeks and now they’ve kind of stretched it out.

RUSH: Why? Have they said why?

CALLER: Because of there’s a lot of C-19 cases at the plant.

RUSH: Amongst the employees?

CALLER: Yes, sir. So there’s hundreds of small farmers that bring pigs to that processing plant every day.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: In a two-week period, that’s about $56 million of hogs that won’t go to that processing plant. So that’s money out of the farmer’s pocket.

RUSH: Well, now, wait. Is there any other processing plant or other processing plants relatively nearby that —

CALLER: Actually there’s one a hundred miles away, and it also closed this week.

RUSH: Oh. So there’s no slaughterhouse to pick up the slack?

CALLER: Nope. There is no place for these hogs to go. Farmers are digging holes. We will probably have to destroy our hogs and put ’em in this hole, burn ’em, bury ’em.

RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute. Wait just a second. Why not just keep them alive for three or four weeks in case the places reopen?

CALLER: Well, this is a whole chain. The farming industry is a whole chain of events. When we take 2,000 hogs out of our shed up to be processed, we clean, we disinfect, we wash everything, and baby pigs come in. And we grow them for three months. Those baby pigs are waiting in line to come to our confinement. Those guys can’t hold the baby pigs.

RUSH: I see.

CALLER: So we either have to destroy —

RUSH: It’s a whole supply chain that’s predicated on everything in the chain happening. And if something happens and you can’t off-load, you don’t have the feed, you don’t have the money for the feed, and like oil, you don’t have any place to put these pigs. I get it. It’s a problem. Thank you for the call.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We had that woman caller who claimed that she’s not an expert in farming, but she was. She was able to expertly describe for us the problems here with pig slaughterhouses being shut down, and I have a story here from the U.K. Daily Mail: “Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods shutters two more meat processing plants in Missouri and Wisconsin… Smithfield on Wednesday closed two more plants in Missouri and Wisconsin.

“Plant in South Dakota closed after becoming the biggest single source of infection in the United States. CEO warns that packing plants are a ‘bottleneck’ in the U.S. food supply chain. Closures threaten to raise the price of pork or cause temporary shortages.” A price increase is what’s gonna happen. They’ll find a way. They’ll find a way to get this stuff to market.

There may be some delays, but you can count on the price being a little higher. So what have we learned from this? One of the biggest hot spots in the virus right now is due to hog plants owned by the Chinese. (laughing) Who freaking knew? The reason that all the pork-producing plants in Smithfield had to close is that they are staffed with immigrants who don’t speak English.

The only reason South Dakota has any problems with the virus are due to this plant. They don’t have any problem with coronavirus anywhere else in the state of South Dakota — well, not appreciably — just this plant. The people that work there were living sardined into company-owned apartments. Remember, they’re ChiCom owned.

Now, you can imagine that when the governor there, Kristi Noem, pointed out that these people were “culturally different,” she was called a racist xenophobe. But the bottom line is it’s a ChiCom owned and operated company. Yeah, and it lends itself to all kinds of conspiracy conclusions. You can go there. I choose to wait for proof.