The changes come a day after the Detroit automaker warned a chip shortage would lead to a decline to vehicle volume in the current quarter.

Production at factories in Michigan, Chicago and in Cuautitlan, Mexico will be suspended. In Kansas City, production of F-150 pickup trucks will be idled while one shift will run for production of its Transit vans.

The Detroit automaker will also run a single shift or a reduced schedule at its factories in Dearborn, Kentucky and Louisville, while removing overtime at its Oakville factory in Ontario. The Oakville plant currently makes Edge and Lincoln Nautilus SUVs.

All changes will be in place for the week beginning Feb. 7.

Ford shares slumped on Friday, after the automaker posted smaller-than-expected quarterly income and forecast a slower recovery in 2022 vehicle production than rival General Motors.

However, the company said it expected vehicle volume to improve significantly in the second half.

— Reporting for Reuters by Hyunjoo Jin and Ben Klayman.

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Global health officials are eying the animals as a potential risk for people after Denmark last week embarked on a plan to eliminate all of its 17 million mink, saying a mutated coronavirus strain could move to humans and evade future COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. states of Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan — where the coronavirus has killed mink — said they do not plan to cull animals and are monitoring the situation in Denmark.

“We believe that quarantining affected mink farms in addition to implementing stringent biosecurity measures will succeed in controlling SARS-CoV-2 at these locations,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture told Reuters on Tuesday.

USDA said it is working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state officials and the mink industry to test and monitor infected farms.

The U.S. has 359,850 mink bred to produce babies, known as kits, and produced 2.7 million pelts last year. Wisconsin is the largest mink-producing state, followed by Utah.

Sick mink in Wisconsin and Utah were exposed to people with probable or confirmed COVID-19 cases, the USDA said. In Michigan it is still unknown if the mink were infected by humans, according to the agency.

In Utah, the first U.S. state to confirm mink infections in August, about 10,700 mink have died on nine farms, said Dean Taylor, state veterinarian.

“On all nine, everything is still suggesting a one-way travel from people to the minks,” he said. Coronavirus testing has been done on mink that die and randomly on the affected farms, Taylor said. Like people, some mink are asymptomatic or mildly affected, he said.

The CDC said it was supporting states’ investigations into sick mink, including testing of animals and people.

“These investigations will help us to learn more about the transmission dynamics between mink, other animals around the farms and people,” the CDC said. “Currently, there is no evidence that animals play a significant role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to people.”

Coronavirus is thought to have first jumped from animals to humans in China, possibly via bats or another animal at a food market in Wuhan, although many outstanding questions remain.

In Wisconsin, about 5,000 mink have died on two farms, state veterinarian Darlene Konkle said.

One farm is composting the dead mink to dispose of the carcasses without spreading the virus, Konkle said. Authorities are working with the second farm to determine how to dispose of the mink, and dead animals are being kept in a metal container in the meantime, she said.

“They are basically in a metal container, a roll-off type container, that is sealed off at this point,” Konkle said.

Michigan declined to disclose how many mink have died, citing privacy rules.

U.S. authorities are urging farmers to wear protective gear like masks and gloves when handling mink to avoid infecting the animals.

State officials said they are working with USDA to determine whether farmers can sell the pelts of infected mink. The pelts are used to make fur coats and other items.

“It’s our desire and certainly the owners’ desire to be able to use those pelts,” Konkle said.

The coronavirus has also infected cats, dogs, a lion and a tiger, according to USDA. Experts say mink appear to be the most susceptible animal so far.

“Whatever we learn about mink is going to help understand the virus across species,” Taylor said. “It’s going to give us a better response to people to stop this pandemic.”

Canada, at the end of 2018, was home to 98 mink farms, mainly in Nova Scotia and Ontario, down from 237 in 2014, according to Statistics Canada.

Canada’s mink farms as of Jan. 1, 2018 included an estimated 500,600 mink in total, down from 861,500 four years earlier, StatsCan said.

— Tom Polansek reports on agriculture and ag commodities for Reuters from Chicago; additional reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Cooperative Elevator Co., which is owned by over 1,100 U.S. farmers and operates mainly in Michigan’s “thumb” northeast of Flint, announced Friday it will buy the bean business for an undisclosed sum.

Scoular’s edible bean business includes the former Roy Legumex processing plants at Plum Coulee and Morden, Man. It also has a plant at St. Hilaire, Minn., about 130 km south of the Manitoba border.

Also included in the deal are Scoular’s receiving stations at Grafton and Garske, N.D., both of which are about 90 km south of the Manitoba border.

The sale will allow Cooperative to expand its geographic footprint, while also allowing Scoular to focus on its other core businesses, the companies said.

Scoular bought the edible bean business in 2015, paying $94 million for the special crops division of Winnipeg’s Legumex Walker as the latter company wound down operations.

Cooperative is based at Pigeon, Mich., about 160 km northwest of Sarnia, Ont. It has 11 locations in Michigan and one in North Dakota.

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“It’s unambiguously good news to have more processing capacity close to Ontario,” said Patrick O’Neil, Ontario Pork’s marketing division manager, at the Ontario Pork Congress.

The Clemens Food Group, a vertically integrated pork production company, is building a 550,000-square-foot fresh pork processing plant at Coldwater, Michigan, in the south of the state, about a four-hour drive from the Ontario border.

The plant, expected to be completed by the end of 2017, will be the only pork processing plant in Michigan and one of the closest U.S. plants to the Canadian border.

There’s additional value in having a plant in Michigan, because the restrictions on trailers are based on tons per axle, which means more pigs can be put on a truck, compared to running to Ohio and Indiana. The lower Canadian dollar also means that Canadian hogs are competitive in the U.S.

The Clemens plant in Coldwater isn’t the only new plant building built in the U.S.; Seaboard Triumph Foods is building a new plant at Sioux City, Iowa and Prestage Farms is trying to build a new plant in Iowa, but is having trouble finding a location.

New processing capacity won’t necessarily mean higher pork prices, O’Neil said.

“I still think most packing plants, they’re not wanting to outbid their competitors and pay more than the U.S. average price for hogs,” he said.

The Clemens family also produces hogs and will be filling up a good proportion of its new plant with its own pigs, along with other large farms who have committed to the plant.

There are also extra costs moving pigs over the border. Quebec packers, O’Neil said, have been buying more Ontario hogs and they pay for freight costs — something that U.S. packers do not.

“It’s going to be a really good option close by and it’s a big company. To actually gauge the impact, we’re going to have to see what happens,” said O’Neil. “The distance, especially if you have pigs in London or west, it’s significantly closer to ship the pigs into Coldwater than into Quebec.”

The hog market in general is strong, with market prices ahead of forward contracts.

It’s all about demand, despite strong volumes of pigs being produced in North America.

“The great news is, we see markets for our pork,” said Eric Schwindt, chair of the board of Ontario Pork, in an interview at the Pork Congress.

“Japan, China, the Far East — they want to eat more pork as the standard of living in the Far East improves. So there’s more demand. We’re also seeing it in the U.S. with more packing plants being built this year and next year. Again, more demand is always a great thing for pork producers.”

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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Three young geese collected at Sterling Heights, Mich., about 35 km north of Windsor, Ont., were infected with the highly pathogenic H5N2 avian flu strain, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

The state is now focusing on preventing the spread of the disease to poultry, director Keith Creagh said.

Nationwide, more than 46 million chickens and turkeys have been killed by the disease or culled to prevent its spread. Most are in Iowa, the top U.S. egg-producing state, and Minnesota, the nation’s top turkey-producing state.

Michigan is the 21st state to confirm a case of bird flu since late 2014 and the sixth to detect it only in wild or free-ranging bids, according to the department. Fifteen states have found the virus in poultry flocks.

The discovery of the disease in Michigan was “not unexpected given avian influenza has been found in a number of our neighbouring states and Ontario,” said Jamie Clover Adams, director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Ontario confirmed H5N2 in commercial poultry in April at three farms — all in Oxford County, about 180 km east of the Ontario/Michigan border at Sarnia — with no new cases reported in the province since then.

Wild birds are thought to be carriers of the virus, which also can be tracked onto poultry farms by people or trucks that come into contact with contaminated feces. It may also be carried into poultry barns by wind blowing in contaminated dirt or dust.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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