Meatpackers deny workers benefits for COVID-19 deaths, illnesses

© Reuters/Jim Urquhart FILE PHOTO: Outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Greeley, Colorado

By Tom Hals and Tom Polansek

(Reuters) - Saul Sanchez died in April, one of six workers with fatal COVID-19 infections at meatpacker JBS USA's slaughterhouse in Greeley, Colorado, the site of one of the earliest and deadliest coronavirus outbreaks at a U.S. meatpacking plant.

Before getting sick, the 78-year-old Sanchez only left home to work on the fabrication line, where cattle carcasses are sliced into cuts of beef, and to go to his church, with its five-person congregation, said his daughter, Betty Rangel. She said no one else got infected in the family or at Bible Missionary Church, which could not be reached for comment.

JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, denied the family's application for workers' compensation benefits, along with those filed by the families of two other Greeley workers who died of COVID-19, said lawyers handling the three claims. Families of the three other Greeley workers who died also sought compensation, a union representative said, but Reuters could not determine the status of their claims.

JBS has said the employees' COVID-19 infections were not work-related in denying the claims, according to responses the company gave to employees, which were reviewed by Reuters.

As more Americans return to workplaces, the experience of JBS employees shows the difficulty of linking infections to employment and getting compensation for medical care and lost wages.

"That is the ultimate question: How can you prove it?" said Nick Fogel, an attorney specializing in workers' compensation at the firm Burg Simpson in Colorado.The meatpacking industry has suffered severe coronavirus outbreaks, in part because production-line workers often work side-by-side for long shifts. Companies including JBS, Tyson Foods Inc and WH Group Ltd's <0288.HK> Smithfield Foods closed about 20 plants this spring after outbreaks, prompting President Donald Trump in April to order the plants to stay open to ensure the nation's meat supply. The White House declined to comment on the industry's rejections of workers' claims. The U.S. Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment.

Tyson has also denied workers' compensation claims stemming from a big outbreak in Iowa, workers' attorneys told Reuters. Smithfield workers at a plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, also hit by a major outbreak, have generally not filed claims, a union official said, in part because the company has paid infected workers' wages and medical bills.

Smithfield declined to comment on workers’ compensation. Tyson said it reviews claims on a case-by-case basis, but declined to disclose how often it rejects them. JBS acknowledged rejecting claims but declined to say how often. It called the denials consistent with the law, without elaborating.

Workers can challenge companies' denials in an administrative process that varies by state but typically resembles a court hearing. The burden of proof, however, usually falls on the worker to prove a claim was wrongfully denied.

The full picture of how the meatpacking industry has handled COVID-related workers' compensation remains murky because of a lack of national claims data. Reuters requested data from seven states where JBS or its affiliates have plants that had coronavirus outbreaks. Only three states provided data in any detail; all show a pattern of rejections.

In Minnesota, where JBS had a major outbreak, meatpacking employees filed 930 workers' compensation claims involving COVID-19 as of Sept. 11, according to the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. None were accepted, 717 were rejected and 213 were under review. The agency did not identify the employers.The Minnesota Department of Health said only two meatpacking plants there had significant coronavirus outbreaks: a JBS pork processing plant in Worthington, and a poultry plant in Cold Spring run by Pilgrim's Pride Corp , which is majority-owned by JBS.

Tom Atkinson, a Minnesota workers' compensation attorney who has represented meatpacking workers, estimates up to 100 COVID-19 claims were filed by employees at the Worthington plant.

In Utah, seven JBS workers filed claims related to COVID-19 by Aug. 1 and all were denied, according to the state's Labor Commission. At least 385 workers at a JBS beef plant in Hyrum, Utah, tested positive for COVID-19.

In Colorado, 69% of the 2,294 worker compensation claims for COVID-19 had been denied as of Sept. 12. Although the state does not break down the denials by industry, a JBS spokesman told Reuters the company is rejecting claims in Colorado and that it uses the same claim-review procedures nationwide.

JBS spokesman Cameron Bruett did not answer the question of whether JBS employees were infected on the job and declined comment on individual workers’ claims. He said the company has outsourced claim reviews to a third-party administrator.

"Given the widespread nature of viral spread, our third-party claims administrator reviews each case thoroughly and independently," said Bruett.

The administrator, Sedgwick, did not respond to a request for comment. Bruett, also a spokesman for Pilgrim's Pride, did not respond to questions about infections and claims at its Minnesota plant.

At the JBS plant in Greeley, where Sanchez worked before he died, at least 291 of about 6,000 workers were infected, according to state data. The company, in its written response to the family’s claim, said that his infection was “not work-related,” without spelling out its reasoning. The two sides are now litigating the matter in Colorado's workers' compensation system.

Under Colorado law, a workers' compensation death benefit provides about two-thirds of the deceased worker's salary to the surviving spouse and pays medical expenses not covered by insurance. If JBS had not denied the Sanchez family’s claim, that would have provided his widow a steady income and paid uncovered medical bills totaling about $10,000, according to his daughter.

"They don't care," Rangel said of JBS. "They are all about the big profits, and they are not going to give any money out."

MASS INFECTIONS, LITTLE COMPENSATION

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union, which represents 250,000 U.S. meatpacking and food-processing workers, said last week at least 122 meatpacking workers have died of COVID-19 and more than 18,000 had missed work because they were infected or potentially exposed.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said on Sept. 11 that it had cited JBS for failing to protect workers at the Greeley plant from the virus. OSHA cited Smithfield this month for failing to protect workers at its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant, where the agency said nearly 1,300 workers contracted the coronavirus and four died.

Smithfield and JBS said the citations had no merit because they concerned conditions in plants before OSHA issued COVID-19 guidance for the industry. OSHA said it stands by the citations.

Workers' compensation is generally the only way to recoup medical expenses and lost wages for work-related injuries and deaths. The system protects employers from lawsuits, with few exceptions, and allows workers to collect benefits without having to prove fault or negligence. But the system was designed for factory accidents, not airborne illnesses.

In response to the coronavirus, governors and lawmakers in at least 14 states have made it easier for some employees to collect workers compensation for COVID-19 by putting the burden on companies and insurers to prove an infection did not occur at work. But most of the changes, which vary by state, only apply to workers in healthcare or emergency services. A similar proposal failed to gain support in Colorado.

Mark Dopp, general counsel for the North American Meat Institute, a trade association that represents meatpackers, said it is difficult to determine where workers get infections given extensive sanitation efforts taken by meat plants and workers' daily travel to and from the plants.

Tyson in April closed its Waterloo, Iowa, pork processing plant due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Ben Roth, a local workers’ compensation attorney, said five families of employees who died filed workers compensation claims for death benefits, and all were denied.

He said meat-processing companies have an incentive to deny every claim because admitting they caused even one infection can expose the firms to liability for all workers contracting COVID-19.

"That undercuts the argument that they want to make across the board: that you can’t prove you got it here and not at a grocery store," Roth said.

Tyson said it follows state laws for workers’ compensation. The company noted that Iowa law states that disease with an equal likelihood of being contracted outside the workplace are "not compensable as an occupational disease.”

In Colorado, Sylvia Martinez runs a group called Latinos Unidos of Greeley and said she knows of more than 20 JBS workers who applied for workers compensation and were denied. Many plant workers are not native English speakers and sought out her group for guidance, she said, adding that many don't understand their rights and fear being fired. The company's rejections have discouraged more claims, Martinez said.

"If you deny five or 10, those workers will tell their co-workers," she said.

'WHO IS GOING TO HIRE HIM?'

JBS also contested the claim of Alfredo Hernandez, 55, a custodian who worked at the Greeley plant for 31 years. He became infected and was hospitalized in March. He still relies on supplemental oxygen and hasn't returned to work, said his wife, Rosario Hernandez.

Generall y, companies approve claims if it looks probable that an employee was injured or sickened at work, said Erika Alverson, the attorney representing Hernandez. But JBS, she said, is arguing workers could have contracted COVID-19 anywhere.

"They're getting into, where did our clients go, what were they doing during that time, who was coming into their house, what did their spouse do, was there any other form of exposure?" said Alverson, of the Denver firm Alverson and O’Brien.

A judge will decide the Hernandez case in an administrative hearing. In the meantime, the Hernandez family has only his disability benefits – a portion of his salary – to cover his medical and insurance costs, Rosario Hernandez said.

"We're getting bunches of bills," she said.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Caroline Stauffer and Brian Thevenot)

Tyson Foods sets net-zero emissions goal, but falls short on farming project
By Tom Polansek 

© Reuters/Mike Blake FILE PHOTO: Tyson food meat products are shown in this photo illustration in Encinitas

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Tyson Foods set a goal on Wednesday to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050, after missing a deadline to improve U.S. farming practices as part of an earlier effort to cut emissions.


The new target by the biggest U.S. meatpacker by sales expands a previous goal of reducing emissions by 30% by 2030.

To achieve net-zero emissions, Tyson said it will plan for U.S. operations to use 50% renewable energy by 2030 and extend a program to verify sustainable production practices for cattle, among other steps.

"We believe progress requires accountability and transparency," said John Tyson, chief sustainability officer.

Three years ago, Tyson Foods pledged to improve environmental practices on two million acres (809,370 hectares)of U.S. farmland by 2020. So far, though, it has enrolled just 408,000 acres, according to the company.

Tyson said it now plans to meet its two-million-acre target by 2025.

The company does not own grain farms but has influence over farming as the U.S. meat industry's largest buyer of feed corn. Two million acres is enough land to grow corn to feed all Tyson chickens for a year.

The 408,000 acres represent land enrolled in a 2019 pilot program by Farmers Business Network, which sells agricultural supplies online, according to Tyson.

A pilot program run by another company, MyFarms, enrolled 11,000 acres in 2019, Tyson said. However, Tyson removed these acres last year due to a lack of data and discontinued MyFarms' pilot in 2021, according to the meatpacker.

For Tyson Foods, it was a big learning experience to determine how to obtain "high-quality information about what's going on at the farm in a way that is as frictionless as possible for all parties," John Tyson said.

Interruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic also hindered land stewardship work last year, Tyson said in a sustainability report.

Meatpackers including Tyson came under fire in 2020 as COVID-19 infections tore through slaughterhouses.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek; editing by Richard Pullin)

JBS Foods cited after worker dies in Colorado chemical vat

 In this Oct. 12, 2020 file photo, a worker heads into the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo. Meatpacker JBS Foods Inc. faces about $59,000 in fines after a worker fell into vat of chemicals used to process animal hides and died at one of the company's meat processing facilities in northern Colorado, officials said. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)


GREELEY, Colo. (AP) — Meatpacker JBS Foods Inc. faces about $59,000 in fines after a worker fell into vat of chemicals used to process animal hides and died at one of the company’s meat processing facilities in northern Colorado, officials said.

The employee at the plant in Greeley fell into the vat March 27 while trying to install a paddlewheel used to churn the chemicals, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Investigators determined that JBS failed to adequately secure a trolley and hoist that were being used to lift the paddlewheel.

JBS and its Swift Beef Co. operations were cited for eight safety violations related to the accident, The Greeley Tribune reported on Wednesday.

“The employees at this facility deserve better than to fear for their lives and their safety when they come to work,” OSHA Area Director Amanda Kupper in Denver said in a news release.

JBS said in a statement that employee “health and safety is at the core of all our decisions,” and that the company is committed to providing a safe environment at its facilities.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations, sent Monday, to comply with or contest them, or to ask to meet with Kupper.

OSHA fined JBS $15,615 in September 2020 for failing to protect its employees in Greeley from COVID-19. Six workers there died and nearly 300 were infected.

Laid-off: Former Tyson Foods chicken farmers face high costs switching to eggs

By Tom Polansek

April 30, 2024

REUTERS

 A worker sorts cage-free chicken eggs at Hilliker's Ranch Fresh Eggs in Lakeside, California, U.S., April 19, 2022. Picture taken April 19, 2022. 

REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

CHICAGO, April 30 (Reuters) - Some U.S. farmers who once raised chickens for Tyson Foods to slaughter are shifting to sell eggs instead after the meatpacker closed six plants, a move that left local suppliers with limited options for work.

In one example, former Tyson suppliers in central Virginia formed a cooperative that will produce cage-free eggs for Indiana-based Dutch Country Organics on a dozen farms, after Tyson closed its nearby Glen Allen plant last year.

In Dexter, Missouri, the world's biggest egg company, Cal-Maine Foods (CALM.O), opens new tab, in March finalized a deal to buy another chicken meat plant Tyson shuttered. Cal-Maine recruited local farmers to produce eggs.

The switch to eggs, which carries high costs, reflects the tough choices former Tyson suppliers around the country must make following the company's 2023 decision to shut plants in an effort to return to profitability in its chicken business after misjudging consumer demand.

Egg farming also comes with risk as lethal bird flu infections have hit laying hens harder than broiler chickens raised for meat. The virus flared up for a third year this spring, resulting in the culling of nearly 10 million hens involved in commercial egg production so far this year. Cal-Maine culled about 1.9 million, opens new tab birds this month after an outbreak in Texas.

MILLIONS TO UPGRADE
Former broiler growers must spend millions of dollars on barn and equipment upgrades to produce eggs, a notoriously volatile market, 18 poultry producers, government officials and industry experts told Reuters. Last year, egg prices tanked after reaching record highs due to the worst-ever outbreak of bird flu in poultry.

"It's a very expensive investment from the grower," said John Bapties, who is president of the Central Virginia Poultry Cooperative and raised chickens for Tyson for 20 years before the Glen Allen plant closed.

His cooperative is placing hens in barns that formerly housed broiler chickens, and expects to sell cage-free eggs produced by about one million birds to Dutch County Organics within a year, he said.

Farmers needed to replace dirt floors in barns with concrete and install nesting systems for hens, among other costly renovations.

Taylor Lee, a former Tyson grower in DeWitt, Virginia, said he decided against the switch. He will focus on raising crops while keeping his poultry barns empty for now.
"They're painting a pretty picture with that co-op but it's $2.8 million roughly to upgrade my farm to egg production," Lee said.

Roger Reynolds, another Virginia farmer who supplied broiler chickens to Tyson, said he is considering producing eggs for Braswell Family Farms. His daughter found work there after Tyson's plant closure eliminated her job.

Producing eggs means a different way of life, Reynolds said. For one thing, hens lay most of their eggs in the morning, meaning farmers cannot go to church on a Sunday without checking their barns first, he said.

CAGE-FREE EGGS

The United States has about 125 million cage-free laying hens, about 40% of total layers, U.S. government data show. More are needed after some states banned sales of eggs from caged hens and restaurants committed to cage-free supplies, Dutch Country Organics CEO Lamar Bontrager said.

"I've been getting calls like crazy," Bontrager said. "Those guys are all concerned of where to procure their eggs."

Dutch Country sells eggs to retailers including Walmart (WMT.N), opens new tab, Kroger (KR.N), opens new tab and Target (TGT.N), opens new tab, according to Virginia officials.
Former broiler growers offer egg companies an opportunity to expand production because the farmers are already familiar with poultry.

"It's one of the ways that these companies are converting: by grabbing old barns," said Brian Moscogiuri, global trade strategist for Eggs Unlimited.

Tyson declined to comment. The company said last year that 55 broiler growers supplied the Glen Allen plant and that it offered them buyout packages. The plant had about 700 employees.

Tyson has laid off corporate employees and said it will close an Iowa pork plant, in addition to shutting chicken plants. Farmers depended on the plants as markets for their livestock.

The meatpacker is slated to report quarterly results on Monday.

In Arkansas, the third biggest broiler-producing state, Tyson closed two chicken plants. Some of its former growers found work supplying other chicken companies, said Jared Garrett, Arkansas Farm Bureau's director of commodity activities and economics.
"They lucked out," he said.

JOBS WANTED

Tyson closed chicken plants in Dexter and Noel, Missouri, with about 700 workers and 1,500 workers, respectively. Cal-Maine said it plans to initially employ about 100 people at the Dexter plant.

"While I welcome Cal-Maine's investment in Dexter, it does not right the wrongs of Tyson or guarantee new jobs for the more than 2,000 Missourians now out of one," U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said in a statement to Reuters.

David Wyman, Dexter's city administrator, also welcomed Cal-Maine, though it is expected to work with a fraction of the farmers who supplied Tyson. Cal-Maine said it expects to expand over time and that revenue opportunities will be as good or better than farmers had under previous contracts.

But some former Tyson suppliers are left with empty barns, Wyman said: "They're really in bad shape."

Egg farming is generally harder to get into operationally than raising chickens for meat; requires more capital and labor expertise; and carries higher disease risks, said Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor and agricultural economist at Cornell University.
"Due to the closure of the plants and termination of contracts, the switch is in a way a move of necessity," he said.

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Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Anna Driver

Biden Launches Plan to Fight Meatpacker Giants on Inflation

Mike Dorning
Mon, January 3, 2022

Biden Launches Plan to Fight Meatpacker Giants on Inflation

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden promised to “fight for fairer prices” for farmers and consumers Monday as he announced plans to combat the market power of the giant conglomerates that dominate meat and poultry processing.

“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism, it’s exploitation,” 

Biden said. “That’s what we’re seeing in meat and poultry.”

Biden joined Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Attorney General Merrick Garland to meet virtually with ranchers and farmers to hear complaints about consolidation in the industry, ratcheting up a White House campaign blaming anti-competitive practices in the industry for contributing to surging food inflation.

Biden launched a portal that will allow producers to report unfair trade practices by meatpackers. He also highlighted initiatives the administration is taking to counter meatpackers’ economic power, including $1 billion in federal aid to assist expansion of independent processors and new competition regulations under consideration.

The announcement focuses fresh attention on Biden’s fight with the meat-processing industry and helps cast him as a president willing to take on powerful business interests over consumer prices. Many Democrats are concerned that months of negotiations over Biden’s economic plan have distanced him too much from the most pressing kitchen-table problems facing Americans.

Inflation has swiftly moved to the top of public concerns as the annual rise in consumer prices hit its highest level in almost 40 years. Meat prices, which in November were up 16% from a year earlier, have been the biggest contributor to grocery inflation. Meatpacking industry representatives blame soaring prices on labor shortages, rising fuel prices and supply-chain constraints.

Shares for meat companies were mixed. Tyson Foods Inc., the biggest U.S. meat company by sales, climbed 0.7%, reversing earlier losses. JBS SA, the world’s biggest meat supplier, fell 4%.

Scott Blubaugh, president of the Oklahoma Farmers Union, praised the initiative. “Not since Teddy Roosevelt have we had a president that’s willing to take on this big issue,” he said.

But others were skeptical it would do enough. “The Administration has not announced that it will take decisive enforcement action to protect America’s cattle producers from the harms they’ve been experiencing for the past seven years, and we remain disappointed with that omission,” Bill Bullard, chief executive officer of R-CALF USA, a group that represents independent cattle producers.

Biden didn’t answer a question on whether he would seek to break up large meat-processing companies. His efforts to inject more competition in the industry run counter to decades of consolidation since the late 1970s as the industry shifted to larger plants to cut costs and courts adopted a more permissive interpretation of antitrust law.

Companies including JBS have said that a shortage of workers is affecting operations in every developed nation, limiting production increases and raising costs.

“Labor remains the biggest challenge,” Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, a trade group, said in a statement. “Our members of all sizes cannot operate at capacity because they struggle to employ a long-term stable workforce. New capacity and expanded capacity created by the government will have the same problem.”

Mike Brown, president of the National Chicken Council, a poultry trade group, said levels of concentration in the sector haven’t changed much over the past 20 years.

“It’s time for the White House to stop playing chicken with our food system and stop using the meat industry as a scapegoat for the significant challenges facing our economy,” Brown said in an emailed statement.

Biden singled out the meat and poultry processing industries for scrutiny in a July executive order on promoting competition across the economy. His top economic adviser later criticized meatpackers for “pandemic profiteering.” The U.S. Agriculture Department also announced plans in June to consider three new sets of regulations on unfair trade practices in livestock and poultry markets, with officials anticipating the proposal of new rules early this year.

The president has placed critics of corporate consolidation in key positions across his administration, including Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter as assistant attorney general for antitrust.

Four large meatpacking companies control 85% of U.S. beef processing capacity, according to data released by the White House. Other meat sectors are also highly concentrated, with four companies controlling 70% of the pork market and 54% of the poultry market, according to the White House.

A fact sheet the White House distributed to reporters asserts that as a result of that concentration, most livestock producers “now have little or no choice of buyer for their product and little leverage to negotiate.” Tyson Foods Inc. reported record profits on its beef processing in quarterly earnings released in November.

In November, ranchers received 36.7 cents for every dollar consumers spent on beef at the grocery store, down from 51.5 cents in 2015, according to the Agriculture Department. Fifty years ago, their share was more than 60 cents, according to the White House.

“This is a decades-long trend that we are seeing,” said Bharat Ramamurti, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “The result, based on the economic literature, is higher prices for folks, fewer options for workers, which means that there’s downward pressure on wages. It also means that there’s less innovation and productivity.”

The aid for independent meat and poultry processors, which will come from Covid relief funds, includes $375 million for gap financing grants and $100 million for guarantees of loans made through private banks, according to the fact sheet.

Ted Schroeder, a Kansas State University agricultural economics professor who specializes in livestock markets, said it’s difficult to forecast the overall impact of Biden’s efforts, but expressed doubt the federal aid for independent processors will alter the market much.

Meatpacking is a cyclical business and processors may soon be squeezed again as droughts and higher feed grain prices drive up cattle prices, he said.

“How can smaller, higher cost, highly leveraged new plants hope to survive through such a market environment in the next few years? I am concerned many will not,” Schroeder said.

Biden to meet with farmers as he seeks to cut meat prices

President Joe Biden waves as he leaves St. Ann Roman Catholic Church after attending Mass in Wilmington, Del., Saturday, Jan. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By JOSH BOAK

AP

President Joe Biden will meet virtually with independent farmers and ranchers to discuss initiatives to reduce food prices by increasing competition within the meat industry, part of a broader effort to show the administration is trying to combat inflation.

The White House event occurs Monday afternoon as higher-than-expected inflation has thwarted Biden’s agenda. Consumer prices in November rose 6.8% over the prior 12 months — a 39-year high. Inflation has hurt Biden’s public approval, become fodder for Republican attacks and prompted Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to cite higher prices as a reason to sideline the Democratic president’s tax, social and economic programs.

Biden is building off a July executive order that directed the Agriculture Department to more aggressively look at possible violations of the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which was designed to ensure fair competition and protect consumers. Meat prices have climbed 16% from a year ago, with beef prices up 20.9%.

The administration is targeting meat processing plants, which can shape the prices paid to farmers and charged to consumers. The White House issued a fact sheet saying that the top four companies control 85% of the beef market. In poultry, the biggest four processing firms control 54% of the market. And for pork, the figure is 70% for the four biggest firms

Biden plans to stress the plans to distribute $1 billion from the coronavirus relief package to help independent meat processors expand. He also plans to highlight funding to train workers in the industry and improve conditions, as well as issue new rules for meatpackers and labeling requirements for being designated a “Product of USA.”

The Justice Department and the Agriculture Department will launch a joint effort to make it easier to report anti-competitive actions to the government. The administration will also seek to improve the transparency of the cattle market.

The effort is part of a broader attempt to regain control of America’s economic narrative. Besides inflation, the repeated waves of coronavirus outbreak have dampened people’s opinions about the economy despite strong growth over the past year.

Biden will have an opportunity to highlight the economy’s strengths with the December jobs report being released Friday. Economists surveyed by FactSet expect that the United States added 362,000 jobs last month with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.1%. Gains of that magnitude would indicate that the U.S. added roughly 6.5 million jobs last year, more than in any other previous year in a reflection of population growth and government spending.

Biden Unveils Plan to Boost Competition in US Meat Industry
January 03, 2022
Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland attend a video conference with farmers, ranchers and meat processors to discuss meat and poultry supply chain issues, on the White House campus, Jan. 3, 2022.

The United States will issue new rules and $1 billion in funding this year to support independent meat processors and ranchers as part of a plan to address a lack of "meaningful competition" in the meat sector, President Joe Biden said on Monday.

The initiative comes amid rising concerns that a handful of big beef, pork and poultry companies have too much control over the American meat market, allowing them to dictate wholesale and retail pricing to profit at the expense of their suppliers and customers.

"Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism. It's exploitation," Biden said. "That's what we're seeing in meat and poultry industries now."

A recent White House analysis found that the top four meatpacker companies – Cargill, Tyson Foods Inc., JBS SA and National Beef Packing Co. – control between 55% and 85% of the market in the hog, cattle and chicken sectors.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack speaks during a video conference on the White House campus in Washington, Jan. 3, 2022.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) will spend the $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan to expand the independent meat processing sector, including funds for financing grants, guaranteed loans and worker training, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was speaking at an event with Biden.

USDA will also propose rules this year to strengthen enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act and to clarify the meaning of "Product of USA" meat labels, which domestic ranchers have said unfairly advantage multinational companies that raise cattle abroad and only slaughter in the United States.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a virtual meeting on the White House Campus in Washington, Jan. 3, 2022.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, also speaking at the event, said "too many industries have become too consolidated over time," and that the antitrust division of the Department of Justice has been chronically underfunded.

The Biden administration issued an executive order last year that advocated a whole of government approach to antitrust issues.

A central concern in agriculture has been meat prices, which have risen at a time when the White House is fighting inflation. An analysis in December by the White House economic council found a 120% jump in the gross profits of four top meatpackers since the pandemic began.

Reaction to plan

The meat industry has said the White House analysis was inaccurate and criticized the new plan.

National Chicken Council President Mike Brown called the plan "a solution in search of a problem."

North American Meat Institute spokesperson Sarah Little said staffing plants remains the biggest issue for meatpackers and that the White House plan would not address it.

"Our members of all sizes cannot operate at capacity because they struggle to employ a long-term stable workforce," she said. "New capacity and expanded capacity created by the government will have the same problem."

Eric Deeble, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, cheered the plan, calling it a "very positive step to ensure farmers and ranchers receive fair prices."

The anticipated rulemaking under the Packers and Stockyards Act "could have a significant impact," said Peter Carstensen, emeritus professor of law at University of Wisconsin-Madison and former antitrust attorney at the Department of Justice. But he noted that investment in independent processing itself would not address market concentration.

Austin Frerick, deputy director of the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University, an antitrust research center, said the plan does not go far enough to tackle the power of the top meatpackers.

"I do not believe this (plan) will meaningfully change the concentration numbers," he said.

PROFITEERING = INFLATION

Steak Prices Will Keep Rising, Major U.S. Meatpacker Says

Tatiana Freitas
Wed, May 4, 2022,


(Bloomberg) -- Beef will be getting even more expensive at U.S.

 grocery stores in the months ahead, according to one of the country’s biggest meatpackers.

National Beef Co., controlled by the Brazilian giant Marfrig Global Foods, sees relatively stable margins in the next two quarters, according to Tim Klein, who heads Marfrig’s U.S. operations. That means even though their costs to buy cattle are increasing, the company will ultimately be able to pass that on to consumers in the form of pricier steaks and burgers.

“Cattle prices will go up, and beef prices will go up with them,” Klein said during an earnings interview.

The cost of meat has been a focus as consumers grapple with the fastest inflation in four decades. The average price for ground beef in America grocery stores has jumped 18% from a year ago, according to the government data. American shoppers may adapt to inflation by switching to less expensive cuts, according to Klein.

Marfrig beat analysts’ estimates for earnings before items and revenue, posting a record for a first quarter. U.S. operations drove the gains, while South America’s unit started a recovery amid booming Chinese demand and improving cattle supply in Brazil, according to Miguel Gularte, who heads operations in the region. Marfrig’s slaughterings in Brazil rose 20% in the quarter, the double compared with the industry average, Gularte said.

Net income fell 61% from a year ago due to a non-cash loss on the mark-to-market of its stake in the food giant BRF SA. Starting next quarter, Marfrig will add BRF earnings to its balance sheet, according to Chief Financial Officer Tang David. Last month, Marfrig’s founder, Marcos Molina dos Santos, was elected BRF chairman.

REST IN POWER

Mike Davis’s Many Contributions to Building a Better World Will Live On

No leftist writer can compare to Mike Davis — not in clarity, breadth, generosity, or ironclad commitment to the working class. Davis has died, but his ideas will continue to find life in generations of leftist activists and thinkers to come.

Madison Square Garden's interior filled with thousands of striking garment workers in 1958. A banner reads "On with the strike — on to victory!" Mike Davis remained resolute in his belief in labor's collective power. (Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)

BY  BARRY EIDLIN
10.29.2022

 Jacobin 

Our mentors are dying.

At one level, this is a banal statement — an inevitable consequence of the forward march of time. But for those of us on the Left, there are historical and political factors that give it additional weight.

One consequence of the past several decades of defeat and demoralization for the Left has been a lack of generational replacement of leftist leadership and mentorship. Not only have there been fewer people available to serve as potential new leaders and mentors, but those of us who came of age politically between the 1980s and 2000s have had fewer and smaller movements upon which we could cut our teeth and develop as leaders and mentors ourselves.

As a result, it has fallen to veterans of the movements of the 1960s and ’70s to carry much of the weight of keeping the Left alive through difficult decades. That means that, as these veterans inevitably pass from the stage, the loss is that much more painful, their absence that much more deeply felt.

While we can appreciate this sociological observation about generational replacement at an intellectual level, it doesn’t change the fact that each individual death still feels like a gut punch. Knowing the history and sociology does little to soften the blow.

That is certainly the case when speaking of a figure of the caliber of Mike Davis, who died on October 25 at age seventy-six. We all knew this moment was coming after learning that he shifted to palliative care for his cancer a few months ago. But that didn’t prepare us for living in a world deprived of his prolific and penetrating insights.

Reading the tributes and remembrances that have flowed in over the past few days, it is hard not to be awed by the scale and scope of his reach. There is of course his immense body of writing, in which he managed to speak with authority, clarity, and insight on a dizzyingly vast array of matters without slipping into dilettantism.

From droughts and pandemics to urban development and resistance to labor history and politics, socialist strategy, and so much more, few others combined his careful research, clear-eyed analysis, political commitment, and eerie clairvoyance, all wrapped in dense yet riveting prose.

It won him a devoted readership across wide swaths of the US and global left, while also commanding respect in some of the halls of academia and the more mainstream public sphere. Few other thinkers occupy such a central place in graduate seminar syllabi and socialist reading groups while also being influential enough to attract the attention of the MacArthur Foundation and the ire of real-estate developers, along with attempts at exposés from the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and the Economist, among others. (The Los Angeles Times, for its part, shifted to more appreciative profiles of Davis later on).

On its own, Davis’s writing would be more than enough to be remembered as a giant of the Left. But he combined this with a lifetime of activism, organizing, and engagement, from his early years organizing with Students for a Democratic Society to participating in wildcat strikes as a truck driver and meatpacker to mentoring new generations of socialists in recent years. He was also generous as an academic mentor, taking the time to read, comment, and inquire about the work of graduate students and junior scholars just finding their way. Again, I am hard pressed to think of others who combined these qualities to the degree that Davis did.

Unfortunately, I cannot add any personal remembrances of Davis to this piece, as I never had the good fortune of meeting him myself, though I have long been in his orbit. I was first exposed to him as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, where politics professor Chris Howell kept a copy of Prisoners of the American Dream on reserve at the library for his students. Later, when I went to work for Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), Davis’s writings on labor and the Left became a critical part of my political education, which I read alongside those of Kim Moody, Mike Parker, Jane Slaughter, Bob Brenner, and others.

When I made the transition from labor organizer to labor scholar, Davis stayed with me. I assigned his work in my social movements class and my seminar on “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.” This ensured that I would have the privilege of revisiting and reengaging with his writing year after year. I never ceased to be amazed at the new insights I gleaned from each additional rereading and new ideas that would come to me after sitting with his work.

It reinforced for me not just how insightful Davis was as a thinker but how generative he was. He provided a jumping-off point for countless other scholars to take our own deep dives — even if we might never get as deep as he did.

Indeed, as I posted on social media back in 2018, as I was preparing to teach “Why the US Working Class is Different” in my seminar, “I’m amazed at how [Davis] can casually toss off ideas for about five dissertations in a single paragraph.”



Many of my students had similar reactions to his work, consistently mentioning it as a highlight of the course. Likewise, for me, teaching his work has been a highlight of my life as a professor.

I did come very close to meeting Davis this past September. I had wanted to interview him about his time doing rank-and-file organizing as a Teamster and meatpacker in the 1970s for a book I’m working on with Jacobin editor Micah Uetricht about the Left’s “turn to industry” in that period, when members of socialist organizations took jobs in factories for organizing purposes. It’s a part of Davis’s life that was often mentioned in various profiles but rarely explored.

After I learned of his shift to palliative care, I figured that I had missed my opportunity, but seeing several profiles of him based on lengthy interviews published in the following months made me think that I might still have a chance. So I emailed him and was surprised to receive a reply almost immediately. He was happy to talk but could likely only handle an hour-long interview. We made plans for me to travel down to San Diego the following week, with the caveat that I should check with him the day before.

As scheduled, I wrote him the day before and received a reply: “I had a visit from my end-of-life physician this morning and she bluntly told me cancel all interviews or visits from friends. Apologies.”

While we had to cancel the visit, I was at least able to share with him how much his work influenced my own, how much my students get from reading him, and to thank him for his contributions toward building a better world.

Those contributions may now have come to an end, but they will live on in every student and organizer whose world will make a little more sense, and whose path to changing it will be a little clearer, thanks to Mike Davis.

Barry Eidlin is an associate professor of sociology at McGill University and the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MIKE DAVIS 

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CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

EXPLAINER: Twitter, Musk and the Delaware Chancery Court


Thu, July 14, 2022 



DOVER, Del. (AP) — Twitter Inc.’s lawsuit to force billionaire Elon Musk to make good on his promise to buy the social media giant will be resolved in a small but powerful Delaware court that specializes in high-stakes business disputes.

Twitter has sued Musk in Delaware’s Court of Chancery in an effort to force him to complete a $44 billion takeover deal reached in April.

WHAT IS THE LAWSUIT ABOUT?

Musk, the world’s richest man, pledged to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter but now wants to back out of the agreement. He claims the company has failed to provide adequate information about the number of fake, or “spam bot,” Twitter accounts, and that it has breached its obligations under the deal by firing top managers and laying off a significant number of employees.

Twitter argues that Musk, CEO of electric car maker and solar energy company Tesla Inc., has operated in bad faith and is deliberately trying to tank the deal because market conditions have deteriorated and the acquisition no longer serves his interests. According to the lawsuit, the value of Musk’s shares in Tesla, which he was to draw upon to help finance the acquisition, has declined by more than $100 billion since November.

Either Musk or Twitter would be entitled to a $1 billion breakup fee if the other party is found responsible for the agreement failing. Twitter wants more, however, and is seeking a court order directing Musk to follow through with the deal.

WHEN DOES THE TRIAL START?

Twitter lawyers are asking the court to expedite the case. They have proposed a four-day trial starting Sept. 19.

WHAT IS THE COURT OF CHANCERY?

The Court of Chancery, established in 1792, traces its roots to the High Court of Chancery of Great Britain, which in turn evolved from an earlier institution in feudal England known as the King’s Chapel. The court, overseen by the lord chancellor as “keeper of the king’s conscience,” served as an alternative to the more rigid and inefficient common law courts. It held the power to offer remedies such as injunctions, estate administration, and, notably, “specific performance,” which can force a party to complete a transaction against its will.

The 230-year-old Court of Chancery typically handles civil cases where a plaintiff is seeking non-monetary damages. Such cases can include disputes over property boundaries and land purchases, guardianship appointments, and estates, trusts and wills.

More often than not, they involve business disputes pitting companies against disgruntled shareholders, or parties to failed mergers and acquisitions against one another.

HOW DOES THE COURT OF CHANCERY WORK TODAY?

The seven judges on the Delaware Court of Chancery exercise these powers today, making it a key venue for high-stakes business disputes. Delaware features a well-established and carefully nurtured body of corporate case law dating to 1899 and is the corporate home to more than 1 million business entities, including more than 60% of Fortune 500 companies. Many merger agreements, in fact, specify that any disputes will be heard by a Delaware Chancery Court judge.

“It’s not that they are necessarily more brilliant than judges in other states, they just have a lot of exposure to this stuff and are pretty sophisticated about it,” said Lawrence Hamermesh, executive director of the Institute for Law & Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

HAS MUSK BEEN IN THIS COURT BEFORE?

Musk is no stranger to the Court of Chancery. Earlier this year, he emerged victorious in a shareholder lawsuit accusing him of a conflict of interest in Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity, a struggling solar panel company in which Musk was the largest shareholder and also served as board chairman.

Hamermesh, a former professor of corporate and business law at Widener University Delaware Law School, noted that the specific performance sought by Twitter is a “pretty rare” remedy, and that it’s uncertain whether the court will force Musk to consummate the deal.

“There are a lot OF? instances where a judge could say, ‘Buyer, you’re in breach,’ but the remedy is a termination fee,” he said. “Given what I have seen so far, my gut instinct is that Twitter’s got the upper hand legally. Whether they’ll get the full specific performance or just the breakup fee is a little harder to say.”

HOW HAS THE COURT ACTED IN THE PAST?

If the court does force Musk to close the deal, it would not be without precedent.

In 2001, poultry giant Tyson Foods Inc. was ordered to complete its $3.2 billion acquisition of meatpacker IBP Inc. when a judge granted IBP’s claim for specific performance.

More recently, a Chancery judge last year ordered private equity firm Kohlberg & Co. to close its $550 million purchase of DecoPac Holdings Inc., which sells cake decorations and technology to supermarkets for in-store bakeries. Vice Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick said Kohlberg had failed to demonstrate that a decline in DecoPac sales amid the coronavirus pandemic constituted a “material adverse effect” allowing the buyers to walk away. McCormick, who was sworn in as Chancellor, or head judge of the court, just one week after her ruling, described it as “a victory for deal certainty.”

On the flip side, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster declared in 2018 that a pharmaceutical company targeted for a merger had experienced such a decline in its financial condition that it amounted to a material adverse effect, allowing the proposed buyer to terminate the deal. The ruling marked the first time the court found the existence of a material adverse effect, or MAE, in a business transaction. It allowed German health care company Fresenius Kabi AG to walk away from its planned $4.3 billion acquisition of U.S. generic drugmaker Akorn Inc.

Randall Chase, The Associated Press

JBS Canada beef processing facility in Alberta resumes production after cyberattack

CALGARY — The JBS Canada beef processing facility in Alberta has resumed production after a cyberattack that impacted the company’s operations in North America and Australia.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The JBS Canada facility in Brooks, Alta., employs more than 2,800 people.

Some plant shifts in Canada were cancelled Monday and Tuesday, according to JBS Facebook posts.

The world's largest meat processing company was the target of an organized cybersecurity attack, affecting some of the servers for its North American and Australian IT systems.

It said its backup servers were not affected and that it was not aware of any evidence that any customer, supplier or employee data had been compromised.

The company said Tuesday it was making progress in resuming plant operations in the U.S. and Australia. It said several of its pork, poultry and prepared foods plants were operational as well as the Canadian facility.

JBS notified the Australian government the ransom demand came from the ransomware gang REvil, which is believed to operate in Russia, according to a person familiar with the situation who is not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The attack was the second in a month on critical U.S. infrastructure. Earlier in May, hackers shut down operation of the Colonial Pipeline, the largest U.S. fuel pipeline, for nearly a week. The closure sparked long lines and panic buying at gas stations across the Southeast. Colonial Pipeline confirmed it paid nearly US$5 million to the hackers.

JBS is the second-largest producer of beef, pork and chicken in the U.S. If it were to shut down for even one day, the U.S. would lose almost a quarter of its beef-processing capacity, or the equivalent of 20,000 beef cows, according to Trey Malone, an assistant professor of agriculture at Michigan State University.

The JBS plant closures reflect the reality that modern meat processing is heavily automated, for both food- and worker-safety reasons. Computers collect data at multiple stages of the production process; orders, billing, shipping and other functions are all electronic.

It's not the first time a ransomware attack has targeted a food company. Last November, Milan-based Campari Group said it was the victim of a ransomware attack that caused a temporary technology outage and compromised some business and personal data.

In March, Molson Coors announced a cyber attack that affected its production and shipping. Molson Coors said it was able to get some of its breweries running after 24 hours; others took several days.

Following the incident involving Colonial, Canadian pipeline companies TC Energy and Enbridge said they regularly take precautions, including technology and training to protect their operations from cyberattacks.

Cybersecurity experts say a common way for hackers to penetrate security is to trick employees through emails or texts that allow disruptive software into corporate systems.

A Proofpoint survey of 1,400 chief information security officers from 14 countries, found that email fraud was identified as the top cybersecurity problem for the Canadian CISOs.

Other problems cited by the Canadian respondents to the first-quarter survey was the use of unauthorized devices or software, as well as weak passwords.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2021.

— With files from The Associated Press

The Canadian Press

JBS RESTARTS 
By Nandita Bose and Tom Polansek

© Reuters/Bing Guan FILE PHOTO:  JBS USA Worthington pork plant in Minnesota

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) -JBS SA employees were scheduled to return to U.S. meat plants on Wednesday, a day after the company's beef operations stopped following a ransomware attack.

A notorious Russia-linked hacking group is behind the cyberattack against JBS that disrupted meat production in North America and Australia, a source familiar with the matter said.

Brazil's JBS controls about 20% of the slaughtering capacity for U.S. cattle and hogs, so the plants' reopening should prevent a severe supply chain disruption at a time consumers are already facing high meat prices and general food inflation.

JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, said on Tuesday night it had made "significant progress in resolving the cyberattack."

The "vast majority" of the company's beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will be operational on Wednesday, according to a statement.

The cyberattack followed one last month by a group with ties to Russia on Colonial Pipeline, the largest fuel pipeline in the United States, which crippled fuel delivery for several days in the U.S. Southeast.

The cyber gang goes by the name REvil, the source said.

Cybersecurity investigators have previously said they believe some members of the REvil ransomware team are based in Russia. The prolific ransomware group, which is perhaps best known for attacking an Apple Inc supplier named Quanta Computer earlier this year, has previously posted in Russian on cybercrime forums, marketing stolen data.

In the Quanta Computer case, the hackers sent extortion threats and demanded a payment of $50 million for the company to regain access to its systems.

With North American operations headquartered in Greeley, Colorado, JBS sells beef and pork under the Swift brand, with retailers like Costco Wholesale carrying its pork loins and tenderloins.

U.S. beef and pork prices are already rising as China increases imports, animal feed costs rise and slaughterhouses have confronted a labor shortage since COVID-19 outbreaks shut down many U.S. meat plants.

JBS also owns most of chicken processor Pilgrim's Pride Co, which sells organic chicken under the Just Bare brand.

The company's operations in Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom were not affected by the attack, JBS has said.

JBS canceled an early shift on Wednesday at its beef plant in Greeley, but a later shift was scheduled to resume normally, representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 said in an email.

A JBS beef plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, told its workers on Facebook it would resume normal schedules in all departments.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) cattle futures rose on Wednesday after tumbling on Tuesday as the JBS plant shutdowns prevented farmers from delivering their cattle to slaughter plants.

Over the past few years, ransomware has evolved into a pressing national security issue. A number of gangs, many of them Russian speakers, develop the software that encrypts files and then demand payment in cryptocurrency for keys that allow the owners to decipher and use them again.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek and Caroline Stauffer in Chicago and Nandita Bose in Washingon; editing by Steve Orlofsky and Nick Zieminski)

  

Air Canada pilots union to seek conciliator, says parties are far apart in talks

Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press

Air Canada pilots intend to request help from a federal conciliator to assist in stalled contract negotiations with the airline, the union representing them announced Sunday.

The Air Line Pilots Association, representing more than 5,000 Air Canada pilots, said the two sides are not close to a deal despite a year of contract talks, including close to six months of voluntary mediation.

"Unfortunately, Air Canada continues to undervalue your contributions to the success of this airline," said Charlene Hudy, head of the union's Air Canada contingent, in a video message to members.

She said that while talks have allowed the two sides to reach important agreements, they remain too far apart in negotiations and so pilots will be leaving the voluntary process on June 15. 

The union says it will file a notice of dispute to inform the federal Minister of Labour that they've attempted, but failed, to reach a collective agreement, and to request the minister assign a conciliator.

Air Canada said in a statement that the airline remains committed to achieving a fair, negotiated agreement.

"Air Canada has worked hard and in good faith to reach a new collective agreement with ALPA under the bargaining protocol and the talks conducted under the bargaining protocol led to significant progress," it said.

The airline said it will continue to push for an agreement in the coming months under the normal bargaining process, insisting customers can continue to book and travel with confidence on Air Canada.

Canadian pilots have been seeking gains that will bring them closer to deals won by their counterparts in the U.S.

Between March and September last year, pilots at Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines secured agreements that included four-year pay hikes ranging from 34 per cent to 40 per cent.

Hudy has called the wage gap between Canadian and American pilots "unacceptable."

The Canada Labour Code stipulates the minister has up to 15 days to appoint a conciliator, after which a 60-day period of talks begin. If no deal is reached in the talks, there's a 21-day cooling-off period before the union could be in a position to strike. 

Last week, WestJet Encore reached a deal with its pilots to narrowly avoid a potential strike. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2024.

Operations suspended at British Columbia's Gibraltar copper mine due to worker strike

The Canadian Press

A worker strike has forced Vancouver-based Taseko Mines Limited to suspend operations at its Gibraltar copper mine in central British Columbia, about 200 kilometres south of Prince George.

The company issued a news release on Saturday saying negotiations for a new contract with unionized workers ended late Friday with no deal.

It says it then shut down mining and milling operations before midnight, and only essential staff remain to maintain critical operations.

Unifor says its Local 3018 members voted to strike today, accusing Taseko of refusing to negotiate "basic terms of a new collective agreement."

A news release from the union says contract negotiations began in February, and the workers' latest contract expired on Friday.

The release says Unifor Local 3018 represents about 550 workers at the mine, which is the second largest open-pit copper mine in Canada and the largest employer in the region.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2024.

 

Cargill shifts beef production after weeklong strike at Canada plant

Gerson Freitas Jr., Bloomberg News

Signage is displayed outside the Cargill Inc. meat plant in Chambly, Quebec, Canada, on Monday, May 11, 2020. The case-ready facility for beef, pork, chicken and sausage has shut down as the company is “concerned about the number of cases in the community and among our employees,” according to a May 9 statement. Photographer: Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

Cargill Inc. is shifting beef production to other facilities after halting operations at a Canadian plant due to a weeklong strike at the facility.

Beef processing at Cargill’s Dunlop plant in Guelph, Ontario was halted after about 1,000 workers took to the picket lines on May 27. The plant has capacity to process 1,500 head of cattle per day. The workers rejected a proposal that the US meatpacker said would have raised wages by 9.3 per cent in the first year of a four-year agreement.

“While we navigate this labor disruption, we will shift production to other facilities within our broad supply chain footprint to minimize any disruptions to our customers,” a Cargill spokesperson said.

The Ontario plant suspension comes as profit margins of North American beef producers have been under pressure due to a shortage of slaughter-weight cattle.

World's biggest meat company linked to 'brutal massacre' in Amazon

Investigation traces meat sold to JBS and rival Marfrig to farm owned by man implicated in Mato Grosso killings  

Protests against the illegal timber trade in Brazil have highlighted the number of people killed while defending the forest. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Published on Tue 3 Mar 2020

A new investigation has linked the world’s biggest meat company JBS, and its rival Marfrig, to a farm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory.

The report by Repórter Brasil comes as JBS faces growing pressure over transparency failings in its Amazon cattle supply chain.

On 19 April 2017, nine men were brutally murdered in what became known as the “Colniza massacre”. The men had been squatting on remote forest land in the state of Mato Grosso when their bodies were found, according to court documents. Some showed signs of torture; some had been stabbed, others shot.

According to charges filed by state prosecutors in Mato Grosso, the massacre was carried out by a gang known as “the hooded ones”. The aim, they said, was to terrify locals, take over land they lived on and extract valuable natural resources. The first reporter to reach the lawless, far-flung region only got there a week later.

 

House of farmer and evangelical pastor Sebastião de Souza in Taquarussu do Norte, Brazil, one of the men murdered in the Colniza massacre. Photograph: Fabiano Maisonnave/Courtesy of Climate Home

On 15 May 2017, prosecutors said they had charged Valdelir João de Souza, a farmer who owned two timber companies on neighbouring land, and four others with homicide and forming or being part of an illegal paramilitary group. Prosecutors said de Souza had ordered the massacre, although he had not been present when it occurred.

Since then de Souza has been a fugitive. But in April 2018 two adjacent areas of land – Três Lagoas and Piracama farms - in nearby Rondônia state were registered under his name (one of the oddities of the Brazilian property system is that landowners register their own land and boundaries). The two farms covered 1,052 hectares (2,599 acres) in an area set aside by the government for low-income agricultural workers. Satellite images show extensive deforestation on the Três Lagoas farm in 2015.


Meat company faces heat over ‘cattle laundering’ in Amazon supply chain

Government sanitary records seen by Repórter Brasil show that on 9 May 2018 143 cattle were sold by the Três Lagoas and Piracama farms to a farm owned by Maurício Narde.

Minutes later Narde’s farm sold 143 animals of the same sex and age – 80 female cattle between 13– 24 months old and 63 female cattle over 36 months old – to a JBS meatpacker.

In June 2017, according to court documents in a separate case, Narde worked at a sawmill owned by de Souza in Machadinho d’Oeste in Rondônia state. He still works at the same sawmill, although it has since changed its name and is no longer controlled by de Souza. Reached by telephone by the Guardian, Narde confirmed the transaction but did not explain why he had sold the cattle after buying them minutes beforehand.

“We buy and sell, just to keep things moving,” he said, before deciding not to answer any more questions and concluding the interview.

Cattle laundering involves the selling on of cows raised illegally on deforested land to ‘clean’ farms. Photograph: Bruno Kelly/Greenpeace

The quick sale of the cattle suggests what environmentalists call “cattle laundering” – when cattle from a farm that has environmental issues sells cattle to a “clean” farm. This gets around monitoring systems because meat companies including JBS do not monitor these “indirect suppliers”.

“This series of coincidences suggests a common practice, which is the triangulation of animals,” said Mauro Armelin, director of Friends of the Earth Brazil. “It is a practice that could indicate cattle laundering.”

On 25 June 2018, according to government sanitary records, Três Lagoas also sold 153 head of cattle to the Morro Alto farm in Monte Negro, Rondônia, owned by José Carlos de Albuquerque.

In the following months de Albuquerque sold dozens of head of cattle to JBS and Marfrig slaughterhouses.

De Albuquerque told Réporter Brasil that the sale had never been completed – but the report cited sanitary records showing the cattle had, in fact, entered the Morro Alto farm. Contacted by the Guardian by phone and email, he declined to answer questions.

The Repórter Brasil investigation highlights the difficulties that Brazil’s big meat companies have in monitoring their supply chains.

JBS and other big companies such as Marfrig committed to not buying from farms involved in illegal deforestation in two separate agreements signed with Greenpeace and Brazilian prosecutors in 2009 and subsequent years. Under the Greenpeace deal, the companies also promised to remove producers accused of land grabbing or convicted in rural conflicts from their suppliers lists. The deal with federal prosecutors similarly bans farms that have been convicted of involvement in rural conflicts, or that are being investigated.

Greenpeace quit their deal in 2017, after JBS was fined for buying cattle from farms in illegally-deforested areas in the Amazon state of Pará. An audit by federal prosecutors found that 19% of the cattle JBS purchased in the state in 2016 had “evidence of irregularities”.

  

Large meat companies have promised not to buy cattle from farms that encroach on indigenous lands. Photograph: Paulo Pereira/Greenpeace


In the years following the cattle agreement, JBS made enormous progress in improving its monitoring of Amazon suppliers and the company defended its sustainability in a statement.

“We monitor over 280,000 square miles, an area larger than Germany, and assess more than 50,000 potential cattle-supplying farms every day, as well as conducting daily checks of all purchases to ensure compliance with strict standards. To date we have blocked more than 8,000 cattle-supplying farms due to noncompliance,” it said.

But while the company now has a complex system in place to monitor its direct suppliers, it is still unable to monitor its indirect suppliers – those farmers who sell to farms that then sell on to JBS.

Revealed: fires three times more common in Amazon beef farming zones

De Souza’s case has yet to be concluded. Ulisses Rabaneda, a lawyer representing de Souza, told the Guardian that he had decided not to reply to questions from the media at this stage in the court proceedings.

In an interview with the Gazeta Digital in 2019, de Souza said he was innocent of all charges, had never been involved in death squads, and remained a fugitive because he was scared he would be murdered by the real killers if he handed himself in.

“I never went around armed, so why at my age of 41, with solid companies, a peaceful life, no debts, without any problems, would I do something so barbaric?” de Souza said in the interview. “I built everything with the honesty and effort of my family. Why would I throw it all away?”

JBS told Réporter Brasil that de Souza was not a supplier and that it does not “acquire cattle from farms involved in deforestation of native forests, invasion of indigenous reserves of conservation, rural violence, land conflicts, or that used slave or child labour”.

“JBS reiterates that any attempt to link the company to the person mentioned in the report, who was never on its list of suppliers, is irresponsible,” the company told the Guardian.

Marfrig declined to comment on the investigation and sent the statement it had previously sent to the Guardian in December in which the company recognised that 53% of its Amazon cattle comes from indirect suppliers.

“Marfrig is fully aware of the challenges related to the livestock production chain and recognises its role as an important transformation agent to ensure production vis-à-vis the conservation of Brazilian biomes, especially the Amazon,” the company said.

  

Marfrig has recognised that over half of its Amazon cattle comes from indirect suppliers. Photograph: Ricardo Funari/Greenpeace

It detailed measures including a supplier monitoring platform and its Request for Information (RFI) tool, in which suppliers voluntarily list the farms they may have acquired animals from. The company says a third of the cattle it sources in the Amazon come with an RFI, and it is now working to improve the process with World Wildlife Fund.

In 2017, a Greenpeace report published after the Colniza massacre said a company owned by de Souza, called Madeireira Cedroarana, had accumulated around $150,000 (£116,000) in unpaid fines over a decade from Brazil’s environment agency, Ibama.

Between January 2016 and October 2017 the company exported thousands of cubic metres of timber to the US and Europe. In 2018 it changed its name to Colmar Madeiras; it continues at the same address, but de Souza is no longer its controlling partner. In the interview with Gazeta Digital, he said his company had challenged fines it had received.

JBS IS ALSO IN ALBERTA AND OTHER PROVINCES IN CANADA  

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/12/all-news-that-fits-washington-post.html