MORTON, Ill. – Since 2020, some 323,000 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system students have been denied the taste of pork due to a COVID-era school board decision. With support from the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), the Illinois Pork Producers Association (IPPA) is looking into ways to overturn the decision and reopen a sizable institutional market for Midwest pork.

“There is an all-pork ban in Chicago Public Schools – who knew, right?” said Jennifer Tirey, executive director of the IPPA. “I accidentally found out because I FOIA-(Freedom of Information Act) requested a list of all public schools’ food service directors from the state board of education. Our marketing person sent out a letter, and the food service director from CPS let us know they could not serve pork at all.”

This is because the CPS board changed their wellness policy in 2020 during an eight-hour Zoom meeting to ban pork, according to Tirey. She reviewed footage of the entire meeting to learn that in the seventh hour of the marathon virtual meeting, there were only around a half-dozen board members remaining on the feed eligible to vote on the decision.

“I’ve been working very hard with our national organization and our chief attorney at the national level has helped me craft FOIAs to find out why this happened. My first FOIA came back and it said they could not find any information, so my second FOIA was very detailed, and they told me it was too detailed to respond to. So, now I am working on my third FOIA,” said Tirey, speaking to a group of several dozen central Illinois farmers during a Dec. 16 pork industry roundtable in Morton in Tazewell County.

While no reports of humans contracting COVID-19 from eating infected pork products – it’s impossible – were reported, several large pork production plants temporarily shuttered their operations in the early months of the pandemic due to labor shortages. On April 22, Tyson Foods suspended work at its pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, after at least 150 people with close connections to the plant had tested positive for the coronavirus. In addition, a Smithfield Foods pork processing facility in Sioux Falls, S.D., shut down after having been linked to over 900 infections. It is unclear whether these closures and resultant supply chain challenges contributed to the CPS’ decision.

The CPS’ website acknowledges that all menu selections are pork-free but does not offer further explanation, leading Tirey to question the board’s reasoning. One possibility is that CPS board members voted to remove pork from their menu to offer more halal and vegetarian offerings that eschew pork. Tirey and members of the IPPA are seeking answers to this question and others from the CPS board, and hope to soon engage CPS board members about the health and financial benefits of re-adding pork to the menus of some or all their 643 public schools.

“There is a Chicago Agriculture High School that has sows, raises piglets and sells the meat, but can’t serve the meat,” Tirey pointed out, adding that a recent conversation with a newly elected CPS board representative who formerly worked for the USDA has led her to believe that change could be on the way. 

“He’s very familiar with (USDA’s) Section 32 food purchasing program (for schools) that includes pork. We would be more than happy as a board of directors to come up to the CPS and testify or present at their board meeting. In 2026, we hope to celebrate that up to 350,000 meals per day that didn’t have pork in them will now be able to have pork in them,” Tirey said.