This situation with several meat plants will be an interesting case study. They determined that they were essential and continued to produce, which was the correct call in my opinion.
My company has many products that are essential, and we have continued to produce under strict internal guidelines for social distancing, cleaning and PPE. We had one case about three weeks ago with zero known additional cases. Those who can support production from home have done so but out of about 900 workers at this particular plant about 650 are showing up on a daily basis.
It will be interesting to find out if the meat packaging plants had similar restrictions, if they went about with business as usual or something in between. We may never know for sure, as they may not be completely honest with what policies they did or did not put into place.