Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this week's FireSide chat with Tim Cross, our senior vice president. I'm Lisa Stern, Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications. We're very excited to have you with us here on this Friday. We're especially excited to have our own Donnie Smith joining us, who is part of our UTIA family.
And we will be hearing from him shortly. And be sure to stay with us to the very end of today's chat because we have a special surprise for you. For those of you that are new to our chats, remember to please keep your audio muted. It does help everyone hear the conversation.
Be sure to use the chat function. If you would like to ask a question of one of our guests or to Dr. Cross, and you can use the public chat, or you can actually send it to me privately. It is working this time.
If you don't want your name attached to it. Recording of this session will be made available on our UTIA Coronavirus website. So for those of you that cannot, those that can't join can actually watch this chat a little later on. So to get things started, Tim, we are hearing that more states are lifting the shelter in place requirement and reopening businesses.
Tennessee was one of the first to make this decision. And what are the details of Tennessee's plan as you understand it? Thanks, Lisa. And good morning, everyone, for week six of our fireside chats.
Really nice to see everyone joining us again. And appreciate you taking the time to catch up, give us an opportunity to share a little bit of information and make sure we're all together as we continue through this challenging time. As far as changes that have occurred since we talked last Friday, we do know that the governor has lifted or is letting expire the order to shelter in place. And we're also hearing, even at the national level, more and more, and more tendency for states to consider doing that.
Tennessee is one of the first states to probably make that decision. But I think it's really important to be careful about how we interpret that. Lifting the order to shelter in place does not eliminate the CDC guidance that we're following. So we're not declaring a coast is clear, everything back to normal.
We're not flipping a switch and instantly restarting every segment of our economy, nor every segment of the University and our Institute of Agriculture. This is gonna be a really controlled and careful. And maybe the best in it might be slow reentry process that we're about to embark on. So I think really, and truly the reentry process as a result of this exploration of the shelter in place is a matter of us determining, okay, what does this mean for the University of Tennessee and specifically the Institute of Agriculture?
And we still face the same challenges today that we faced one week, two weeks, even six weeks ago. The question is, how do we slow we carefully and safely respond to the continuing challenges that we have before us? And as I understand it, the metropolitan areas really can make their own decisions, is that correct? That's right.
So the governor has basically said that in our large metropolitan areas, they have their own health department, their own county health staff, whereas in 89 of our counties, the state provides the health department staffing. So in 89 counties, basically, each county will be determining how it comes back online, if you will, under the overall state guidance, whereas in our major metro areas, Knoxville, Nashville, Shelby County, Memphis, they'll be free to make some of their own decisions and implement their own restrictions as well. So what it really almost amounts to is we've got 95 different scenarios we have to deal with or respond to, and it's gonna be challenging obviously, as a statewide organization to stay in sync in each of those locations. While we also adhere to a base level of university guidance as well, and that's a challenge we'll certainly have to deal with.
So what does all this mean for UT and specifically for the Institute of Agriculture? We've really, this week, been realizing that coming back to our workplaces is gonna be a whole lot more challenging than it was to leave our workplaces, because it was pretty straightforward that we needed to scale back and begin to work remotely. And that happened over a relatively short period of time, but it was clear that we needed to send basically everyone home possible, which is the status certainly that we've been in for a while now, that was pretty straightforward. As we think about re-entry, there are a whole lot more factors to think about, because again, think about what the goal is here, and the goal is to slow or reduce the transmission of this virus.
And so as we begin to see more activity with regard to our offices, our classrooms, our laboratories, what we don't want to do is trigger a big increase in the number of cases. And so it's gonna be again, probably a little bit more time consuming and take a little bit more thought as we consider how to bring folks back into our workplaces. So first of all, let me emphasize this is gonna be slow. It's not gonna be fast.
It won't be overnight. And second of all, it's gonna be consistent with the priorities that we set early on. And just as a reminder, those priorities were first to protect the safety and health of our employees, all our faculty and staff, our students, and all the stakeholders that we serve. So that's still priority number one.
Number two, continuing to provide the opportunity for students to succeed, to graduate, to complete their courses and so forth. Number three, carry out our research, carry out our extension programs to the best of our ability and using new delivery or new approaches to those mission areas. And number four, continuing to serve our emergency and critical care patients in the College of Veterinary Medicine. So we're not abandoning those and just saying, okay, it's back to normal, if you will.
We've got to approach this with those who are already still in line. And consistent with that then, we still will be following CDC guidance because that gives us the best, I think roadmap to follow, if you will. And CDC has already established very clear and explicit guidance with regard to phases. And we will only move through those phases as long as our metrics with regard to the number of cases, number of hospital beds, occupied and so forth.
Those are the metrics that will determine whether we can move through the phases from under another. So we have our UTI task force really working hard right now on what those phases would look like for our institute. And we're also of course partnering and working very closely with the University of Tennessee Knoxville and their task force to determine what happens as well. So in a nutshell, what I see moving forward from here is that there will be probably two or three different plans that we'll have to follow.
One plan will encompass all of our campus faculty and staff and students, obviously, consistent with the University of Tennessee Knoxville. So that plan will really emphasize our campus operations. We're gonna need probably a separate and slightly different plan to accommodate our off-campus offices, extension offices and our research and education centers, our four-eight centers, our regional offices. They're gonna be in a different situation than our campus operations are.
So our task force is certainly aware of that and working on that aspect of our planning. And then thirdly, I think our college of veterinary medicine, again, because they really are still in operation. They haven't totally closed the door. They're still serving patients.
And they have very stringent requirements for clinical training for our students. And we can't just shut that off. We have got to adhere to what the accreditation requirements are for our students so that we don't, again, prevent them from making progress. So we'll see probably different aspects of our plan, but my goal is that we would have a baseline set of practices and procedures for each phase that would be in common across the whole institute, but then particular aspects of each of those areas that might differ recognizing that in our county offices, we've got counties who have already declared we're open for business again, effective May 1 or effective May 4.
And while we want to be a great partner with county government, as always, we have to figure out exactly how we do that, recognizing, again, our first priority of protecting health and safety. I also have told many who have asked me, what are you going to do? How are you going to reopen? My response has been, we never closed.
And all of you realize that because you've been working throughout this pandemic, it just hasn't been in the office. So it's really not necessarily a matter of returning to work. It's a matter of returning as needed and as necessary to our places to work, our workplaces, offices, classrooms, and labs, but be patient because this, again, won't happen overnight. We need to be cognizant of those who are in the vulnerable population for this virus, those who are 60 plus and especially with other health issues, those who have family members that they're living with who are vulnerable population.
We also need to be flexible. Many of our workforce have children at home and it's not going to be possible for them to return instantly to work. So we're going to continue to be flexible, compassionate, or continue to emphasize that if you can do your job at home, we want you to continue to do your job at home. We want you to work, we want you to be productive, but we want you to be safe.
And so for the time being, please plan to continue as you have been and we'll let our task force develop plans. We'll make sure we work very closely with our direct supervisors and really have a good solid approach for how we do begin to return and enter phase one of this re-entry process. And Tim, do you see this phase in process beginning on May 4th that data has been chossed out quite a bit? Yeah, I think again, this is coming in some ways very fast.
I do believe, I'll honor about May 4th is when we will begin to phase in parts of our re-entry as far as the Institute goes. I don't believe on campus we'll begin May 4th and I think it may be more like May 11th. Don't hold me to that, but I think it's going to be somewhere in the early to mid May timeframe. And I think much of the first phase might look exactly like what we've been doing for the past six weeks.
So for everyone thinking, okay, it's time to get back to normal. The past six weeks is the normal we're probably going to continue with for the time being, for the foreseeable future, again, recognizing that in some of our off-campus locations that may differ just a little bit. Great, well thinking outside of UT and thinking about many of our partners, a lot of industries have been struggling obviously during the shutdown and that includes agriculture. What are some of the challenges that you're hearing from our producers?
Yeah, I think many of you have probably been seen in the news or in the paper that various industries are experiencing challenges probably different than we are even just due to the environment that they work in. I think about our senior living centers, our assisted living centers, we've seen the challenges they face. And in the past couple of weeks, I've been noticing more and more of the challenges some of our ag and food industries are facing. We've been seeing closure of processing facilities, many of those facilities were designed for workers to be in close proximity with one another for obviously for efficiency.
And in many cases probably for safety as well, but they've been dealing with, in some cases, some fairly significant outbreaks. And I think about the impact that that could have on our food supply and then the downstream effects on our farmers and on our rural communities as well. So I think we are seeing much more widespread activity throughout the economy and responses within various industries. I think it would be great to hear a little bit about that from someone who has been really involved with the industry.
And that's our very own Donnie Smith, former CEO, Tyson Foods and currently a member of our Board of Trustees. Donnie has great experience internationally with regard to the food industry and meat industry in particular. I thought it'd be great to hear from him about his perspective, both about the university's response to coronavirus. He just heard an update on that from President Boyd this morning, but also what he's been hearing and seeing from throughout the food industry and particular meat industry.
So Donnie is an alumni. We're glad to have you back with us this morning. Appreciate your service on the board. And thanks for joining us for this chat today.
Thanks, Tim. Hey, it's good with everybody. I wish we could do this in person, but it is what it is, right? These are certainly unprecedented times, but I appreciate the opportunity to share with you a little bit.
Let me start on the Board of Trustees University deal. I don't have a lot of details to add to what Tim said. I know all the chancellors and system folks are working together to try to lay out a plan and work through multiple contingencies, thinking forward already into the fall and trying to come up with several contingency plans that could range in a broad range of outcomes. I won't go into very much detail, but I would say we did have a board meeting this morning.
It was pretty short, so it won't take a whole lot of your time. I thought it was pretty informative. It was very informative. And I would suggest or hope you, if you didn't watch it this morning, that you take about 45 minutes or so and watch through that, I think Randy and some of the chancellors did a great job providing some good details about what we're doing and that kind of thing.
I will say this, Tennessee jumped on it pretty fast in terms of canceling classes. And the thought was, and across our system, different campuses go on spring break at different times, but who knows where these kids are doing spring break? And my senior field month TV on beach, they're part of it. I don't know.
And as they come back, if we're suggesting a 14 day quarantine, how do we manage that? And so the first decision was, okay, we're not gonna have classes at March, get us through that quarantine period. And then as things started escalating a week later, it was through the rest of the semester and for some of our campuses in the first part of summer, others for the summer, and kind of now looking forward into the fall. So I think we as a university, and frankly, Tennessee as a state, did a great job about being really responsible about how we approach all this.
So I'm real proud, I tell you what, and I popped in on a class or two and that kind of thing. I'm super, super proud of our faculty. And I know that got a lot of staff and support behind them. But I tell you, heroic might be the right word for how our faculty have responded to make sure that our students are successful.
So as a Herbert college grad and a big fan of UT and a member of the board, I wanna thank all of y'all for all that you're doing. Like Tim said, we never closed, we just kind of changed. So these are unprecedented times. There's not a playbook for how to do this because this is never happened for.
And so literally, and of course, we've got, our folks are talking to, chancellors are talking to other chancellors across the conference and other parts of the country. The residents are talking to different groups from state, national level and all that. I mean, everybody is seeking the broadest range of advice they can to be as reasonable and safe and take care of all the concerns of all the constituents that UTIA, we're different because we got extensions to 95 counties and other budgets don't have to deal with that. So I think we've been very good about seeking as much advice as we plot our unique path and how we're gonna kind of change again going forward.
It's interesting, there's a couple of things that have come out of this that I just find interesting. And you won't hear this in the board meeting, this is just on these thoughts about what we've learned in the COVID deal. And then I'll jump over into the meeting industry here in a second, but after 9-11, if you look back at all of that, you think, man, what was the big change that came out of all of that? Well, it was probably TSA, Homeland Security, the way we handle all of that.
And I'm sure there's others, when you look forward to the financial crisis, what came out of that, we got Dodd-Frank and all that stuff. And so it's gonna be interesting to see what comes out of it, what we learn from what we're going through that can help us have, as Randy often says, the greatest decade in the history of the university is gonna see. One thing that I have found, and it hit home for me personally, a couple of three years ago, my daughter, who has three degrees from UTK, she has a PhD at Ed's site from Indiana, but she doesn't have a teaching certificate, so she needed to go back and get a few more credits to be able to get the teaching part so she could do her student teaching and actually then get into perhaps college classrooms and teach. So what she did, well, she called University of Tennessee and said, hey, have you got any online stuff where I can complete the requirements I need to be able to do student teaching?
Nope, we don't do that. Huh, the University of Central Arkansas, I'm probably going to have to have the University of Tennessee and not build it. And so since then, I've been, you know, as advocate for how can we erase the borders of the state and make the University of Tennessee a national institution? And you know, as we face the enrollment cliff, as I call it, you know, with a number of high school graduates dropping, I think 25, 26, whatever year that is, it's gonna be important for us from a revenue basis to have a broad reach.
And Randy noted today that prior to March 1, we had 60,000 credit hours that we offer. Now we have almost 600,000 credit hours that we've done online. Now, you know, some of y'all, maybe many of y'all would find this hard to believe and would probably vehemently disagree with what I'm about to say. But some of us kind of resist change.
And one thing that this coronavirus has done is it's forced us to figure out a way to educate students online. Now, you know, look, the Amazon's one-on-one lab that happens, that's probably, you know, came to that online. But there are a lot of things we can do to increase online learning, which we may have to implement. I mean, you think about, you know, Donnie mentioned on the call this morning, you know, you got 40 kids in the classroom and you try to bring them all back in, you can't stay six feet apart, if that's the, you know, gonna be the continuing standard.
How do you do that, right? And so there's a lot yet we have to figure out, and, you know, Tim and all y'all have to, you know, have to do that. And I know your heart and I know you've got the welfare and the success of our students at your heart and protecting the safety of everybody that's on this call and everybody that's related to and connected to everybody on this call. So I have no doubt about two things.
Number one, we'll do a great job because we're the University of Tennessee. I also have no doubt that we'll make a team of sex along the way because we're not perfect. Never have been there will be, but I'm confident that we will do a great job. Well, I think we're doing a great job now and I'm confident we'll continue to do that.
You know, and, you know, I know you guys know how you've been affected. You know, the meat industry, let me just give you a little bit of background there. As Tim said, you know, in a lot of processing plants, you know, if you're on the debon line and chicken plant, debon in the front half of chicken, pulling that breast and tenders, your shoulder to shoulder with 14, 15 other people as that bird comes across in front of you. And there's no, there's no way to change that.
Now, you know, our folks have gloves, sleeves, you know, hair nets, you know, masks are pretty easy ads to PPE, a gown or a frock or whatever you want to call it. And so they're fairly protected, but you are in close proximity with a lot of people inside the square foot of processing plant. And what's been happening, you know, they'll be on an announcement that, you know, processor X had three people come down with COVID-19 and then it gets announced that, you know, certain maybe a team member dies from COVID-19. And what happens is people go, I'm not going back in there.
And so your absentee just skyrockets, you know, it may not even be your plant, it was some other process you plant, but you know, your workers were thinking, hey, look, you know, there's no way I can show this whole distance inside that process plant. I'm just not going to work. And then, you know, you show up to work the next day and half the plant's gone. We can't run.
I mean, you know, and so then your inventory starts backing up out in the field. And you know, chickens and hogs in cattle, they keep growing. And then, you know, on the other side of that is the financial side. So if you're a, and there's a lot of these companies, if you're a five or six plant processor selling, you know, billion plus dollars a year, predominantly commodity meat that goes into the food service industry in some form.
Normally, about this time of the year, your breast meat is selling for, if you took a five year average and I'm just a spitball in here, your breast meat's probably selling for about a dollar and a half pound. It's up a little higher than summer, the demand's higher. And the headquarters are probably somewhere between 25 and 30 cents pound. Today, you can buy breast meat all day for 50 cents pound.
You know, when a restaurant, you know, I'm part of a small restaurant the other 25% of it deal, our sales are down 40 something. You know, we're, you know, we weren't very good at drive through anyway and now every fancy drive through a curbside. So we're getting a lot of practice on how to get better in our, in our, in our drive through, but, but the leg quarters, you can buy leg quarters all day long for 13 cents. And so that process is revenue model is just completely shot.
And, and then on top of that, half the people aren't coming to the plant and you got to slow the line down, your birds are getting older. You know, if you do a lot of small bird type stuff, then your birds get outside the bell curve and they don't find the home inside that product anymore. So now what do you do? So it just creates all these issues, you know, belly sizes on bacon, you know, ham sizes, ham muscle sizes, all that stuff just becomes huge issues.
And so, you know, while the meat industry and all ag industries are, are deemed essential then are, are continuing to operate. It is, it is, it is continuing to be very, very difficult to manage through all this. And so, and I could go on, you know, the farmer impact is going to be huge. I will tell you that in the, you know, in the, in the amount of the money that went to agriculture, you know, I'm not saying good or bad, I'm just saying a lot of that went into supporting the meat industry so they could do as much as they could to support the farmers that depend on them for a place to process their goods.
But it's tough out there. It's tough here and it is horrific in Africa. I won't go into a whole lot of details, but, but just real quick, a couple of notes and, you know, we know what, you know, to stay at home and social distancing means here. Then Rwanda, it means you better not get caught outside walking around or you better not be seen driving a car unless you have a special permit signed by the government or you will go to whatever jail it looks like now, which may be a tent camp.
So block down means block down. And food, you know, there were so many people living in desperate poverty and only meat, meat once or twice a year anyway, they don't even think about meat and eggs. So, you know, if you're a small producer of meat and eggs, you got real problems because you have no customers. We were producing, we're really, really small there.
We're, we were placing about 5,000 chickens a week. We're selling about 400. So it is a mess. And no government help, there's no bailout, there's no government that have any money to start with.
So, you know, it's just kind of everybody's on their own. So it's, you know, it's difficult for us, it's horrendous for a lot of people in a lot of other parts of the world as we work through all this, which we will, but, but it, you know, not without some pain and difficulty. So I'll have us for a second and, and y'all have any questions of me, I'll be happy to answer. Right, thanks a lot, Donnie.
And I think, you know, having a little contrast this morning between the higher-end industry and food and meat industry and then also the contrast between US and other countries is helpful. We think about ourselves, we think about our own situation, but I think it's important to realize others are experiencing this in a very different way. So appreciate your thoughts and remarks there. Lisa, I think we're ready for questions.
Absolutely. And just a reminder to everyone, both Donnie and Tim are willing to ask questions and we have had a few come through. One is a question about clarification, Tim. And that is, so the expectation that County Extension offices will be back at their desk on May 4th.
We're still working remotely. Any clarification on that? Yeah, I think we do need clarification on that. And it has not yet been developed.
So that's one of those things we'll be working on. Have been working on already and we'll try to bring more specificity to share by next week. Hopefully, you know, as early in the week as possible, but recognizing that we get more information every day. And we're trying our best to bring our plans along with the University of Tennessee as a whole, with UT Knoxville, consistent with state guidance, but then consistent with County guidance as well.
So I apologize. I wasn't clear on that, but it's not clear at this point. So you're going to have to hang with us a little while, Dr. Burns and his team, as well as our task force, are really going to have to get a little bit more specificity developed as we bring our plans along.
And so for now, again, continue to operate as you have, but expect more guidance next week. So another question is, and this may be one somewhat difficult to answer at this point, but is, do you have an estimated timeframe in which UTIA employees will be able to invite visitors back on our campus? No, there's not a timeframe. It would be metrics-based.
It would not be based on a date. It would be based on health experiences and health outcomes. And so we know that for phase one, there will still be no visitors. And we'll continue until we achieve those kinds of health outcomes and metrics that would enable us to move to a phase that would enable visitors on campus.
And I think that's a difficult one, again, to think about, because if you think about it being a person coming to drop off a lab sample, for example, I think that's very different than saying we're going to have 100 people in a meeting room to participate in a face-to-face seminar or workshop. So once again, it's going to be very challenging right now to lay out any kind of a timeline for that. We'll stay consistent with CDC guidance on it. Right now, the guidance is no public gatherings of more than 10 people and even in those gatherings, you still have to have the six-foot social distancing place.
So for right now, we're not changing our projected date of July 31, which we declared as our hopeful cutoff for public meetings, events, and activities, and that includes on-campus visits at this point. So questions come through that someone had heard that a confirmed case has happened at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. So do you know anything about that? And also, where do we stand from an institute perspective on confirmed cases within our own family?
Good boy, I feel like I'm betting zero this morning. I do not know anything about the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga case. So I'm sorry, if I did, I would share it, I promise. But I'm not certain what that case might be.
I know there have been cases at other campuses. To date, we still do not have another employee that has tested positive that's been reported. And I'm confident our folks do the right thing. They would have reported if it had occurred, but we still don't have any other employees that have been impacted.
I think truth and advertising here, I see Dr. Bob Hayes is on with us today. We had a contract employee providing maintenance services, cleaning services at our West Tennessee Research Education Center that tested positive. But that occurred, I believe April 21st.
And there was immediate deep cleaning sanitation done. The contractors employer took all the right steps in response to that. We don't believe there were many, if any direct contacts there. I think that situation is managed very well.
Dr. Hayes, I see you're on. If you wanna make any comments, and we might have to ask Mike Stanley to unmute you. You pretty well outlined the situation.
The employee while they were in, they were only in one building, cleaning, doing deep cleaning. They were wearing a mask and gloves while they were in the building and showed no symptoms. Also the employee's husband did not test positive. So we're pretty hopeful and we did a deep cleaning as quick as it was reported to us.
The General Federal Service came in and went through the building very thoroughly. So we're just waiting and seeing them and hoping for the best. Good, thank you, Bob. And I want to compliment Bob and the team out there at the Western Sea Research and Education Center.
Yeah, did all the right things instantly and really put us in the best possible position to continue having a healthy and safe environment and protecting the health of everyone out there. And Bob, I know by email we discussed that there's very, very few people entering that building. Anyway, again, that's the advantage of us working remotely, even when there is a positive case. If we're not in direct contact with those cases, we're in the best possible position.
So thanks, Dr. Hayes. And great question. Any others Lisa?
Yes, so another question is, at such time as employees do return to our various workplaces, will masks be required as the CDC is suggesting them for general use writing? Yeah, and that's one of those details that we've asked our task force to look at. And I believe, if I were to predict, I would think, you know, again, I'm a big believer. And if something can provide some protection, why wouldn't we want to use it?
So I would lean towards saying, if we're going to be in close proximity with one another, let's do that wearing masks. But then that brings up the issue of where are we going to get those masks and how are we going to distribute them? And how are we going to do that safely? So those are one of the thousands of details that we've got to work out and have our task force weighing on that as well.
So that's definitely on the radar screen. And we did get some clarification on this UT Chattanooga case. It actually was a spouse of an employee in a particular office who immediately went to into quarantine and everything appears to be black, back to normal at this point. Good.
I'd have to mention that. So Donnie, a question for you. You talked about lessons learned from this pandemic, hopefully for the University of Tennessee. What are your thoughts about lessons learned maybe for the meat industry and other producer groups?
Yeah. I think everybody is learning on the fly. I've been out of the game now for, gosh, almost three and a half years. I do still talk to some processors and friends of mine that I worked with.
And so far, I think the best thing that I have this so far in the learning category is really not so much about what processors and agriculturalists are figuring out how to do differently because of this. But it is how important what we do is that the right, it's probably bad English. But I think people who have had safe, abundant, affordable food, all their lives lose an appreciation. Or in our country, have lost, by and large, an appreciation for all that we go through and the supply chain, the transportation, the retailers, food service folks, whatever that we go through to keep our food safe.
In all of this, you're food safe. You may not be, but your food is. And so I think one of the things that, by the way, for any of you who are in active communications or what that's called now versus what it's called in the 70s, we need to capitalize on what we've learned during this about how important agriculture and the food supply chain is to America and to the world. People have a new appreciation for teachers, health care people, farmers, food processors, retailers, truckers, the grassroots parts of this country that often just get passed over for the shining and nickel.
And we need to take this opportunity to continue to expand and teach America how important what we do is. And so I think that's the biggest learning so far. I'm sure there'll be after action reviews for days, for months, after all of this to see what we can do differently. But I'm not aware of any immediate changes in the production models, other than hand-washing, hand-sanitation, that type of stuff that pretty much everybody's doing.
That's great. It looks like one last question here, and that is Dr. Cross, if you can clarify whether extension agents will be allowed to be involved in their county fairs if these fairs actually end up occurring this summer. Well, I don't know that we know the answer to that yet.
Thankfully, it's only April. So we're still a good ways off. And I think that's one again. We'll lean on some input and recommendations, suggest the procedures to follow there, certainly by Dr.
Burns and Extension Administration. And then it will also have to be considered as we go through a phased up reentry process here and think about when the fairs occur relative to what phase we're in of that reentry process. So again, I feel like this morning I've just continually said, well, we don't know. You'll have to wait and see.
That's not because we're trying to hide information. It's because we don't know and you'll have to wait and see. So if planning can occur, I see no harm in being involved in planning those kinds of events. But I know I was on a conference call yesterday with regard to an association meeting that's being planned in February.
And honestly, we're really struggling to think about how a group meeting of 1,000 people is going to happen in February in an out-of-state location and the likelihood of us being involved in that. So it's really challenging right now to think about these larger events with the public and think about how they could be done safely unless there are some real milestone developments, like a vaccine or really effective therapeutic drugs. Without those, it really just seems very challenging to see major changes in public gatherings in the near future. I know that's probably very depressing.
And it's not a messy die, enjoy sharing. But I think we've got to be realistic. And we've got to think this through with regard to where we're at and what the experts are saying. This virus is likely to be doing to us for the next several months, if not years.
So hang tight. I realize county fairs, regional fairs are extremely important as is so many other things that we've either canceled or postponed. We will do our very best to be safe, but to get back to some of those as soon as we can. Tim, with that said, do you have any final thoughts for you today?
Well, I do have a few. And also give Donnie a chance to share any final thoughts as well here in just a moment, Donnie. First of all, I would say, first and foremost, stay committed. We've been doing a great job mitigating the virus amongst ourselves and amongst our communities.
And we need to continue with that. So I think conditions are improving, but we've got to stay strong and continue social distancing, continue great sanitation practices, all the CDC guidance. Stay in touch with your supervisors. We are going to move towards a phase return, but again, it won't be overnight.
So just stay in touch, continue as you have been, and watch for more guidance on those phases. We'll do our very best to be timely with that and provide you information as soon as we can. I know each of you still have challenging situations above and beyond the workplace, whether it's family, friends, community support that you're providing. I know we've got people involved in food service to school groups, to other groups.
So continue to contribute where you can, but again, be healthy and safe as you're doing that. And I appreciate all that you're doing. We established that online portal for contributing stories about how you've changed what you're doing. And I appreciate Donnie's remarks about the fact that one thing a crisis like this does is really incentivize change or motivate or require change.
And we continue to get great story ideas and our marketing communications group is continuing to use those in developing videos, developing news stories, sharing examples with administration and so forth. So thanks for your continued effort, dedication, devotion to carrying out your jobs even under different situations. And keep sharing those success stories with us. Remember the portal can be accessed from our UTI COVID-19 webpage.
So with that, Donnie, any last remarks you'd like to share? Well, first, thanks for having me. Second, you know, as I said before, these are unprecedented times and I know it affects everybody differently. I'm sitting here in my upstairs office with the door closed and doing the Zoom calls easy for me.
But if you're sitting at your kitchen table with two, three kids running around and your spouse there with you, at a different job doing something different, this is hard. And, you know, I'll be totally honest with you and say, you know, look at my gray hair. I can't identify with you anymore. But I certainly empathize with you because, you know, while many of us are not, I don't know, very affected.
I don't know, I really know how I put that. I know some of you, this is just driving you up the wall. And I get that and I understand it. Well, I don't understand it, but I get it.
And I wish there was something we can do differently, but we really are making this up as we go. And I know Tim and his team's philosophy is when they'll know, you'll know. But there's just a lot of this stuff that, you know, if you can, on a situation like this, if you can take one or two extra days and think just around the edges of what you've been thinking about so far, so that maybe you catch one or two other things that you weren't thinking of before two days ago, everybody's better off. So we're trying to go at a pace that is decisive and keeps us moving forward, but not at a pace that's so fast that is reckless and that, you know, I mean, nobody wants to be the campus that makes everything go backwards, right?
And so while, you know, I hate the paralysis by analysis, taking a little bit extra time to think through things a little more deeply and think about people you don't normally think about will benefit us a lot in this time, but, you know, we will move as quickly as we can, as thoughtfully as we can, to make sure that whatever I mean normal is gonna look like we can get there safely. And I really do believe that we will come out of this having learned some lessons that, you know, we previously thought would have been impossible. I mean, I've talked to, I ran through the company, right? And I don't have any times I had people come to me and say, we want to work remotely.
No, we can't do that, right? We're a food company, we got to be together. We got to be collaborative to make decisions. And you know, how are we gonna do R&D remotely?
You know, you can't, I mean, all the people in the plant can't work remotely. All y'all think y'all should work remotely, you know? I mean, that was kind of our response. And now everybody but everybody in the plant is working remotely.
So I was dead wrong, right? And a lot of this will come out and how we utilize space and all that. There's a lot yet we have to learn a lot yet we have to think through, but I couldn't imagine a better group of folks to think through all that than us. So let's be thoughtful and get it right and keep moving forward.
Great, thanks very much, Donnie. We really appreciate you having a board member that knows and understands us is so valuable and gives us a lot of reassurance too. So appreciate it. And loves you.
Yeah. Even better. So I think we're gonna wrap up today's chat a little differently. We've got thanks to our marketing communications staff, a little video to share with you.
Hopefully to send you off with a positive message to again, reiterate that we appreciate all you do. So Lisa, if you can cue that up for us, when the video is over, we'll be done. And I hope everyone has a great weekend once again, and we'll talk again next week. Is the time for us to unite?
To protect each other. To show kindness, to be grateful. To raise each other up. The UT Institute of Agriculture remains committed to providing real life solutions, even during the harsh realities of COVID-19.
We may be working remotely. But we're still here for you. UTI research never stops seeking answers to the questions they must be asked. The Herbert College of Agriculture faculty are still teaching and giving students the education they need.
UT Extension remains front porch of the university, serving farmers, family, and youth. Building stronger communities in all 95 counties. The UT College of Veterinary Medicine is still hard at work every day to protect our animal world. We're going through a hard time.
But we've got this. Oh yeah, we'll be back soon. We'll laugh and love and beat ourselves again. Coronavirus, you are one tough enemy.
Well, volunteer spirit is tougher. Thank everyone, take care. Great weekend.