Agribusiness June 3, 2021 5:03:31 pm

JBS Greeley plant employees return to work

By Lucas High

GREELEY — After missing shifts this week due to the impacts of a cyberattack, employees at JBS USA Inc.’s Greeley beef processing plant are back to normal working hours Thursday, according to their union.

The United Food & Commercial Workers International could not say whether the same will be the case on Friday.

JBS, which owns Greeley-based Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. (Nasdaq: PPC), was hit on Sunday with a cyberattack that brought operations at its slaughterhouses to a standstill and threatened the global supply of beef, which had already seen prices inflate in recent weeks.

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“JBS USA and Pilgrim’s are a critical part of the food supply chain, and we recognize our responsibility to our team members, producers and consumers to resume operations as soon as possible,” JBS USA CEO Andre Nogueira said in a prepared statement Wednesday night. “Our systems are coming back online, and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat. We have cybersecurity plans in place to address these types of issues, and we are successfully executing those plans. Given the progress our IT professionals and plant teams have made in the last 24 hours, the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will be operational tomorrow.”

The FBI is blaming Russian hacking groups for the ransomware attack.

“We have attributed the JBS attack to REvil and Sodinokibi and are working diligently to bring the threat actors to justice,” the bureau said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the attack Wednesday and said of Russia, “Responsible states do not harbour ransomware criminals.”

The Greeley plant’s status as fully operational Thursday appears to reflect a trend of bringing such plants back online across the JBS portfolio.

“Today, the vast majority of our facilities resumed operations as we forecast yesterday, including all of our pork, poultry and prepared foods facilities around the world and the majority of our beef facilities in the U.S. and Australia,” Nogueira said in the Wednesday statement. “Given the progress our teams have made to address this situation, we anticipate operating at close to full capacity across our global operations [Thursday].”