USA
At least 59,000 meat workers caught COVID, 269 died

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 27 October 2021 |

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - At least 59,000 meatpacking workers caught COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday.

The meatpacking industry was one of the early epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic, with workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder along production lines. The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which examined internal documents from five of the biggest meatpacking companies, said companies could have done more to protect their workers.

The new estimate of infections in the industry is nearly three times higher than the 22,400 that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has said were infected or exposed. And the true number could be even higher because the companies' data didn't generally include coronavirus cases confirmed by outside testing or self reported by employees.

At the height of the outbreaks in the spring of 2020, U.S. meatpacking production fell to about 60% of normal as several major plants were forced to temporarily close for deep cleaning and safety upgrades or operated at slower speeds because of worker shortages. The report said companies were slow to take protective steps such as distributing protective equipment and installing barriers between work stations.

"Instead of addressing the clear indications that workers were contracting the coronavirus at alarming rates due to conditions in meatpacking facilities, meatpacking companies prioritized profits and production over worker safety, continuing to employ practices that led to crowded facilities in which the virus spread easily," the report said.

Martin Rosas, who represents a UFCW chapter based in Kansas with over 17,000 members in three states, said the union pressed companies for better protections.

FILE - In this May 7, 2020, file photo workers wait in line to enter the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Ind. At least 59,000 meatpacking workers became ill with COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

"The harsh reality is that many of the companies were slow to act in the early days of the outbreak, and whatever progress that was achieved was due to the union demanding action," Rosas said.

The report is based on documents from JBS, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, Cargill and National Beef. Together they control over 80% of the beef market and over 60% of the pork market nationwide.

The North American Meat Institute trade group defended the industry´s response to the pandemic. And Cargill, Tyson, Smithfield and JBS released statements Wednesday saying they worked aggressively to meet federal health and safety standards and took additional measures to protect their employees, such as conducting widespread testing and urging employees to get vaccinated.

"The health and safety of our team members always comes first and our response since the onset of the pandemic has demonstrated that commitment, with an investment of more than $760 million to date. We have taken aggressive action to keep the virus out of our facilities and adopted hundreds of safety measures that often outpaced federal guidance and industry standards," JBS spokeswoman Nikki Richardson said.

The companies expressed regret at the toll the virus has taken.

"Even one illness or loss of life to COVID-19 is one too many, which is why we´ve taken progressive action from the start of the pandemic to protect the health and safety of our workers," Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said.

The report said infection rates were especially high at some meatpacking plants between the spring of 2020 and early 2021. At a JBS plant in Hyrum, Utah, 54% of the workforce contracted the virus. Nearly 50% of workers at a Tyson plant in Amarillo, Texas, were infected. And 44% of employees at National Beef´s plant in Tama, Iowa, caught COVID-19.

The report said internal documents show Smithfield aggressively pushed back against government safety recommendations after experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspected its pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after a major outbreak. A few days earlier, Smithfield's CEO told the CEO of National Beef in an email that "Employees are afraid to come to work."

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration needs to do more to protect meatpacking workers.

"Some of these companies are treating the workers in the plants not much better than the animals that go through them," Raskin said.

Debbie Berkowitz, with Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, said the industry was slow to respond and federal regulators didn't force companies to act.

"When the pandemic hit, of course it was going to hit meatpacking plants really hard and really fast," said Berkowitz, a former OSHA official who testified Wednesday. "What was the industry´s response - not to protect workers and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, not to separate workers 6 feet apart, which was the earlier guidance that came out in late February - but to just keep on going."

 In this April 9, 2020 file photo employees and family members protest outside a Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. At least 59,000 meatpacking workers became ill with COVID-19 and 269 workers died when the virus tore through the industry last year, which is significantly more than previously thought, according to a new U.S. House report released Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. 

(AP Photo/Stephen Groves File)

US COVID-19 cases unreported in largest meatpacking companies, probe finds

By Mary Yang, Medill News Service

Activists demonstrate to call attention to slaughterhouse workers who have contracted COVID-19 while on the job in Vernon, Calif., on December 11. On Wednesday, a House select subcommittee investigation revealed many U.S. meatpacking plants weren't required to adhere to COVID-19 safety standards.
File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

WASHINGTON -- High coronavirus infection and death rates among workers in the U.S. meatpacking industry went unreported because of a "political decision" to not track cases, according to the report released Wednesday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not require meatpacking companies to install safety standards to protect workers during the pandemic, the Select Subcommittee found. OSHA is the agency responsible for ensuring worker safety, but scaled back investigations in 2020, according to the subcommittee report.

OSHA "totally abandoned" workers, Debbie Berkowitz, former OSHA chief of staff, said at a subcommittee hearing Wednesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended businesses enforce social distancing guidelines, but OSHA did not press meatpacking companies to comply so COVID-19 "spread like wildfire," she said.

The subcommittee did not call OSHA officials to testify.

COVID-19 cases among meatpackers were three times higher than earlier estimates, according to the report, and the virus disproportionately hit workers of color. Last spring, 87% of infected meatpackers were racial or ethnic minorities, the CDC found.

The meatpacking industry is made up largely of immigrant and refugee workers, said Berkowitz, and workers are often afraid to speak out against poor working conditions, fearing punishment from their supervisors.

Workers during the pandemic continued to work in close proximity to each other, said American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska Interim Director Rose Godinez. Godinez is the daughter of two meatpackers, both of whom retired before the pandemic.

More than half of Nebraska's meatpackers are immigrant workers, she said, putting immigrant families and minority communities at higher risk. Last summer, Hispanics accounted for 60% of Nebraska's coronavirus cases, she said, but the Hispanic community is only 11% of the state's population.

Godinez asked subcommittee members to demand OSHA respond to workers' complaints. She also urged members to support comprehensive immigration reform to protect meatpackers who are not U.S. citizens and fear employer retaliation.

Meatpacking companies and the Trump administration "caused enormous pain" to meatpackers and their families, said Select Subcommittee Chairman Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

In an interview before the hearing, Berkowitz said she expects the Biden administration to issue the first protections for meatpacking workers next week by requiring vaccines.

CALL IT DEPARTMENT FOR EMPLOYERS

Trump Labor Department says it may actively defend meatpacking companies over workers in Covid-19 lawsuits

 April 29, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

“We have a president forcing hazardous meat plants to reopen, threatening workers’ health. We have a Labor Department siding with corporations over workers’ safety. Disgusting.”

The stated mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is to protect workers, but the agency is signaling that it may actively defend meatpacking corporations against workplace safety lawsuits filed by employees who contract Covid-19 on the job if the companies show they made a “good faith” effort to comply with federal health guidelines.

“We all need to stop for a second to think about how crazy this is. OSHA is the agency that is supposed to protect people at work. Under this administration, it is now deciding it will defend bad employers in court because the employer ‘tried.'”
—Nate Ring, labor attorney

In a statement Tuesday shortly after President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to keep meat processing plants open amid the coronavirus pandemic, Solicitor of Labor Kate O’Scannlain and OSHA principal deputy secretary Loren Sweatt urged meatpacking employers to comply with the agency’s non-binding safety guidelines.

But O’Scannlain and Sweatt said companies will have leeway to flout standards that they determine are not “feasible in the context of specific plants and circumstances,” provided that they “document why that is the case.”

“Where a meat, pork, or poultry processing employer operating pursuant to the president’s invocation of the DPA has demonstrated good faith attempts to comply with the Joint Meat Processing Guidance and is sued for alleged workplace exposures,” said O’Scannlain and Sweatt, “the Department of Labor will consider a request to participate in that litigation in support of the employer’s compliance program.”

We all need to stop for a second to think about how crazy this is. #OSHA is the agency that is supposed to protect people at work. Under this Administration, it is incredibly understaffed and is now deciding it will defend bad employers in court because the employer “tried.” https://t.co/72weCeuUuP— Nate Ring (@NVUnionLawyer) April 29, 2020

Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary at OSHA, said Wednesday that the Labor Department’s statement constitutes “a free pass to meat and poultry processors.”

In an interview on MSNBC Tuesday night, former OSHA senior policy adviser Debbie Berkowitz slammed her former agency for abdicating its responsibility to safeguard workers.

“The agency has essentially abandoned its responsibility to ensure that employers keep workers safe from Covid-19.”
—Debbie Berkowitz, National Employment Law Project

“OSHA… has chosen—this is a choice—not to enforce any requirements in the meat industry to protect workers,” said Berkowitz, who is currently the director of the worker health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project. “The [meatpacking] industry looked at these recommendations—they’re voluntary—and in the end didn’t implement them.”

“There’s a real price to pay for this kind of, I would call it government malfeasance,” Berkowitz added.

Meatpacking plants across the country have become coronavirus hot spots in April. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the largest meatpacking union in the U.S., said in a statement Tuesday that at least 20 meatpacking workers have died of Covid-19 and more than 5,000 “have been hospitalized or are showing symptoms.”

“The reality is that these workers are putting their lives on the line every day to keep our country fed during this deadly outbreak,” said UFCW president Marc Perrone. “For the sake of all our families, we must prioritize the safety and security of these workers.”

Critics warned that Trump’s executive order mandating meatpacking plants remain open amid the pandemic could lead to another surge in Covid-19 infections and deaths among workers in the industry. According to the Washington Post, at least 20 meatpacking plants have closed in recent weeks due to coronavirus outbreaks at the facilities.

“We have a president forcing hazardous meat plants to reopen, threatening workers’ health,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Wednesday. We have a Labor Department siding with corporations over workers’ safety. Disgusting.”

“Maybe this is too ‘radical,'” Sanders added, “but we need a White House that protects public health during a pandemic.”

We have a president forcing hazardous meat plants to reopen, threatening workers’ health.

We have a Labor Department siding with corporations over workers’ safety.

Disgusting. Maybe this is too “radical,” but we need a White House that protects public health during a pandemic. https://t.co/g3DnKcETqf
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 29, 2020

Between January and early April, OSHA was flooded with thousands of worker complaints accusing employers of violating federal coronavirus guidelines and endangering employee safety by failing to provide adequate protective equipment.

But the agency, overseen by Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, has thus far refused to use its authority to force employers to comply with Covid-19 safety guidelines. OSHA is also massively understaffed with vacancies at 42% of its top career leadership positions, including such crucial spots as director of enforcement and director of whistleblower protection.

“OSHA’s mission to protect workers in the most dangerous jobs has been seriously compromised under the Trump administration,” Berkowitz said in a statement Tuesday. “The agency has essentially abandoned its responsibility to ensure that employers keep workers safe from Covid-19.”

OSHA and USDA Should Have Done More to Protect Meatpacking Workers, Report Says

An Office of Inspector General report concluded the two agencies could have done more to protect meatpackers from contracting Covid-19. The industry was among the hardest-hit sectors in the early months of the pandemic.

by Sky Chadde / Investigate Midwest

April 19, 2022

Top image: Washington, D.C. – Frances Perkins Building. (Photo provided by U.S. Department of Labor)

This story was originally published by The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has food safety inspectors in every large meatpacking plant in the country. Just like the industry’s workers, the government’s inspectors entered the high-risk work spaces almost every day during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sonny Perdue, USDA’s leader during the pandemic’s critical first year, made clear he saw no role for the agency in protecting workers. That mostly fell to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Despite Perdue’s proclamations, however, the two agencies should have collaborated to ensure workers were safe from Covid-19 by leveraging USDA’s employees in plants to provide better oversight of the industry, the DOL’s Office of Inspector General concluded in a new report released recently.

OSHA has been roundly criticized for failing to protect meatpacking workers from the coronavirus. In the pandemic’s first year, the agency doled out small fines to only a handful of plants, and it failed to inspect every plant where cases were publicly reported.

OSHA defended its approach in responses to the inspector general’s office. The head of OSHA under former President Donald Trump, Loren Sweatt, has told Investigate Midwest the agency was dedicated to protecting workers.

The agency entered the pandemic with its fewest number of inspectors in its history. At the same time, the number of workplaces it has to oversee has increased.

This graphic, included in the OIG’s report, shows the number of establishments OSHA is responsible for overseeing and the number of OSHA inspectors.

Still, according to the inspector general’s report, OSHA should have identified what federal agencies oversaw high-risk industries — including meatpacking — and provided training to on-the-ground employees in how to assist with worker safety.

“Without delivering the necessary outreach and training, OSHA could not leverage the observations of external federal agencies’ enforcement or oversight personnel active on job sites regarding potential safety and health hazards,” the report reads.

Fostering collaboration with the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service was “particularly important” given the risk at meatpacking plants, the report said. More than 400 meatpacking workers have died from Covid-19, according to Investigate Midwest tracking.

OSHA and FSIS had some history that made collaborating challenging, according to the report.

Before the pandemic, when FSIS inspectors would make a referral about potential worker safety violations to OSHA, OSHA would investigate FSIS, not the plant, according to the report. Because of this, FSIS inspectors were hesitant to refer possible violations.

OSHA said it “informally collaborated” with FSIS during the pandemic. Starting “early in 2020,” OSHA held weekly meetings with FSIS and other agencies where it “often” discussed the safety of meatpacking workers, the agency said in its response to the report.

OSHA “judged this effort to be far more fruitful than attempting to reach individual FSIS inspectors,” it said.

Sweatt didn’t reach out to FSIS’s head, Mindy Brashears, until mid-April 2020, weeks after the first reported Covid-19 case in a U.S. meatpacking plant and months after news of the contagious disease broke, according to emails obtained by Public Citizen.

“Is FSIS doing guidance for meat packers in the world of Covid-19?” Sweatt asked Brashears on April 11, 2020. “If so, is there anything OSHA can do to be of assistance?”

Brashears then emailed back, saying she’d like to see any guidance documents OSHA had.

“It’s shocking how much OSHA deferred to USDA” on worker safety during the pandemic, Adam Pulver, the attorney at Public Citizen who obtained the records, has said about the emails.

During the pandemic’s first year, Covid-19 deaths had been reported at 65 plants. OSHA didn’t inspect 26 of them, according to an investigation by USA TODAY and Investigate Midwest.

The trend has continued, according to OSHA’s responses to the report. Investigate Midwest has tracked nearly 500 plants with reported Covid-19 cases. Between March 2020 and March 2022, OSHA conducted 157 inspections related to Covid-19 in the meatpacking industry.

THESE COMPANIES OPERATE IN ALBERTA
Major meat companies lied about impending shortages to keep workers on site at the height of the pandemic, a House committee says

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) - 



© Provided by Business Insider

A JBS meat packing plant in Colorado. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

A report by a bipartisan House committee details meat-processing giants' response to the pandemic.

One hospital doctor told JBS that all its COVID-19 patients were linked to a JBS plant in Texas.

The companies exaggerated meat shortages to keep workers on site, according to the report.

Major US meat companies were aware that their sites were hotbeds for coronavirus transmission but exaggerated impending product shortages so they could keep workers on site at the height of the pandemic, according to an investigation by a House committee.

They also lobbied the White House and the US Department of Agriculture to minimize coronavirus safety measures on the industry, according to the report, which was released on Thursday by the bipartisan House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Meat processing sites were a major source of coronavirus outbreaks, triggering a wave of lawsuits. This was largely down to their lack of safety procedures like social distancing and staff's inability to work from home.

The report focused on five of the US' largest meatpacking companies — Tyson Foods, JBS, Smithfield Foods, Cargill, and the National Beef Packing Company. During the first year of the pandemic, more than 59,000 workers at these companies were infected with the coronavirus and at least 269 died, the committee said.

The report details how meatpacking executives were allegedly aware of the high risks of coronavirus transmission inside their plants.

For example, a doctor at a hospital close to JBS' processing plant in Cactus, Texas, sent an email to a JBS executive on April 18, 2020, saying that "100% of all COVID-19 patients we have in the hospital are either direct employees or family member[s] of your employees."

"I am not sure this situation is being treated with the urgency it deserves," the doctor continued. "Your employees will get sick and may die if this factory continues to be open."
Claims of meat shortages were 'intentionally scaring people'

Despite awareness of outbreaks at some sites, meatpacking companies continued to push for their workers to stay on site. In the report, the committee dismissed claims that there would be meat shortages if sites closed as "flimsy if not outright false. It also said they were "an attempt to justify operating meatpacking plants under dangerous conditions."

Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan said in April 2020 that the closure of meatpacking facilities "is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply. It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running."

But an executive at trade body North American Meat Institute said in an email published in the committee's report that Sullivan was "intentionally scaring people." The email also said that three days after his statement, Smithfield had asked the Meat Institute to "issue a statement that there was plenty of meat," including enough for export.

"Smithfield has whipped everyone into a frenzy," the executive added.

Meatpacking companies' reports of impending shortages appeared to come as the companies bulked up their exports. The US exported around 640 million pounds of pork in April 2020 – a 22% increase on April 2019, per data from the Department of Agriculture. Pork exports to China more than quadrupled over that time period, the data shows.

"The meat production system is a modern wonder, but it is not one that can be re-directed at the flip of a switch," a Smithfield spokesperson told Insider. "That is the challenge we faced as restaurants closed, consumption patterns changed, and hogs backed-up on farms with nowhere to go. The concerns we expressed were very real and we are thankful that a food crisis was averted and that we are starting to return to normal."

The report also outlined how the meatpacking industry "worked actively to cultivate its very close relationship with USDA" at the start of the pandemic in an attempt to minimize coronavirus safety measures on the industry. This included the USDA under secretary for food safety being in regular communication with industry representatives and lobbyists, using both her personal and government phone and email, per the report.

The USDA and meatpacking companies also jointly lobbied the White House to dissuade workers from staying home or quitting during the pandemic.

"Meatpacking companies engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight, to force workers to continue working in dangerous conditions, and to shield themselves from legal liability for any resulting worker illness or death," the committee wrote.

The Smithfield spokesperson told Insider that the company had "exceeded CDC and OSHA guidelines" and had paid workers to stay at home during the pandemic.

"The content of the report was deeply disturbing and many of the decisions made by the previous administration are not in line with our values," a USDA spokesperson told Insider. "This administration is committed to food safety, the viability of the meat and poultry sector, and working with our partners across the government to protect workers and ensure their health and safety is given the priority it deserves."

BILL WOULD ADD PROTECTIONS FOR MEATPACKING WORKERS, TARGET INDUSTRY’S MONOPOLISTIC PRACTICES

By 

Chuck Abbott

12/3/2021

Photo credit: USDA

A bill introduced in the Senate this week would improve working conditions and whistleblower protections for meatpacking workers, while also cracking down on monopolistic practices in the industry.

Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act on Tuesday. In a press release, he called it a “critical piece in transforming our food system into one that is rooted in resilience, fairness, and justice.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, will introduce a companion bill in the House.

Booker’s bill includes several provisions that would make meatpacking workers safer, both during routine operations and in pandemics. For example, companies could get a waiver to increase line speeds only after submitting to an inspection that demonstrated that the faster speeds would not affect worker safety. The bill would also establish stricter ergonomic standards for workers and strengthen whistleblower protections. And inspectors would have to verify that employees have prompt and proper access to toilets, without fear of punishment.

Companies would be required to establish a system for publicly reporting the number of employees who become sick during the COVID-19 pandemic and any future pandemics, along with information about their race and employment status.

The bill was crafted with input from a number of worker groups, including Venceremos, an Arkansas organization focused on the poultry sector. Magaly Licolli, the group’s executive director, said the bill reflects many of the workers’ needs and would establish a baseline of standards for the industry that worker groups could build on through organizing efforts. “It would give us leverage to pursue something better,” she said.

Workers felt “abandoned” by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) and other regulatory agencies when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Licolli said. To win better protections, workers have walked off production lines and held wildcat strikes and protests outside plants.

At least 269 meatpacking workers have died so far during the COVID-19 pandemic and some 59,000 have been sickened, an investigation from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found in October. The report blamed the companies for “prioritizing profits” and resisting worker safety measures. It also said OSHA made a “political decision” to not issue rules that would have required companies to take specific actions to protect workers from COVID-19.

While companies are rolling out vaccination programs for workers, Licolli said they are also now removing many of the safety measures put in place earlier in the pandemic, even though the crisis is far from over. “They are moving to get over the pandemic when we know there are still other variants coming,” she said.

Labor shortages are also putting workers at risk, she said, because they are often being asked to work faster and do jobs they aren’t trained to do, leading to more injuries.

The proposed legislation would also make sweeping changes in the meatpacking industry. To address consolidation, it would block smaller meat processing plants receiving certain federal grants from being sold to larger packers for a period of 10 years. It would also strengthen the Packers & Stockyards Act, reinstate mandatory country-of-origin labeling for meat, and extend the requirement to dairy.

Passing such a far-reaching suite of reforms will be difficult, given the immense political power of the meatpacking industry as well as the political polarization in Washington. But while a staffer for Sen. Booker acknowledged that it won’t be an easy fight, he said it’s part of a broader movement-building strategy to transform the food system into one that is better for workers, the environment, and consumers. So even if this bill isn’t adopted in full, parts of it might pass or be included in other legislation.

The pandemic, and its devastating effects on meatpacking workers, exposed a system in dire need of reform, said Jose Oliva, campaigns director at the HEAL Food Alliance, a coalition of groups working to change the food and farming systems. Speaking during a webinar about the bill this week, Oliva said that many of the problems the industry’s workers face — from dangerous working conditions and low wages to a lack of healthcare — aren’t new. “The pandemic didn’t change conditions, but rather unveiled existing conditions,” he said.

Democrats Probe Tyson, Smithfield, OSHA Over Covid Outbreaks

Laura Davison 
Bloomberg
Updated Mon., February 1, 2021



(Bloomberg) -- A Democratic-led House panel is launching a probe into coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants and whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration adequately enforced worker safety rules.

Representative James Clyburn, who chairs the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, sent letters Monday to Tyson Foods Inc., Smithfield Foods Inc., and JBS USA requesting information on the number of sick employees, facility closures, safety measures and leave policies for when workers tested positive. Almost 54,000 workers at 569 meatpacking plants in the U.S. have tested positive for Covid-19, and at least 270 have died, Clyburn said in the letters.

Meatpacking companies “have refused to take basic precautions to protect their workers, many of whom earn extremely low wages and lack adequate paid leave, and have shown a callous disregard for workers’ health,” the letters to the companies said.

Tyson shares slipped 0.2% in New York trading after earlier falling by as much as 2.7%. Brazil-based JBS rose 0.2% in Sao Paulo trading after dropping as much as 1.7% following the announcement of the probe.

Clyburn also asked OSHA to explain the relative lack of citations and penalties issued against meatpacking plants under the Trump administration as the facilities became an epicenter of spread for the virus.

“OSHA issued penalties related to the coronavirus totaling over $3.9 million, but the agency issued only eight citations and less than $80,000 in penalties for coronavirus-related violations at meatpacking companies,” the letter said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Labor said the letter and its request are focused on the Trump administration’s actions and that the current administration is committed to working with Clyburn to protect workers. On Friday, OSHA issued new guidance calling for stronger workplace protections for the virus.

OSHA’s response to the pandemic under Trump was an “utter failure” that “cost workers their lives,” and the probe is “welcome news,” said Mark Lauritsen, director of food processing and meatpacking for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

“We need to answer questions on why it was such a complete failure and what were the factors that influenced the Trump administration and OSHA to basically do nothing while workers were suffering, so it will never happen again,” Lauritsen said.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson, said in a statement that the health and safety of workers is the company’s top priority and that they’ve implemented virus testing and added a chief medical officer to help respond to health guidelines in the wake of the pandemic.

Keira Lombardo, Smithfield’s chief administrative officer, said in a statement that the company has taken “extraordinary measures” to protect employees that exceeded governmental guidelines and that it looks forward to correcting “inaccuracies” about the virus spread at meat plants.

JBS has invested in safety measures and facility modifications and welcomes the opportunity to share “our response to the global pandemic and our efforts to protect our workforce,” according to a statement from the company.

Hot Spots

The spreading virus made meat plants among the early hot spots in the U.S. pandemic, forcing facilities to shut temporarily.

Meat companies spent hundreds of millions to install work-station dividers, sanitizer stations, temperature scanners and to add medical personnel. “Comprehensive protections instituted since the spring” cost more than $1.5 billion, according to Sarah Little, a spokesperson for the North American Meat Institute.

Public health reviews have suggested the outbreaks in meatpacking plants seeded the subsequent spread in the surrounding communities, with one study by researchers at University of Chicago and Columbia University tying as many as 1 in 12 cases of Covid in the early stage of the pandemic to meat-processing facilities

The low OSHA penalties have drawn criticism from Democrats, including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey. Lawmakers have pointed to the meatpacking industry as an example of how companies have failed to protect poorly paid front-line employees.

OSHA has defended the size of the fines. In reference to a $13,494 fine against Smithfield Foods -- after 1,300 workers at the meat-packer’s Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant tested positive for the virus, 43 were hospitalized and four died between March 22 and June 16 -- OSHA said it was the maximum penalty allowed by law.

Clyburn set a Feb. 15 deadline for OSHA staff to brief lawmakers and for the companies respond with the requested data.

(Updates with union comment beginning in eighth paragraph.)

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Originally published Mon., February 1, 2021

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)

Workers in Iowa meat industry fear returning to processing plants

Outbreak at pork plant leads to more than 1,600 cases and 20 deaths as Trump orders meatpackers to restart production.

by William Roberts

Medical workers test a local resident at a drive-through COVID-19 testing site in Waterloo, Iowa, the United States [Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo]

Quia Campbell is a hairstylist and mother of five with family members who got sick with COVID-19 while working at a massive pork slaughterhouse in Waterloo, Iowa.

After her father came home sick from work at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in early April, Campbell became alarmed.

Management at the plant - in the Midwest region of the United States - was not acting on workers' concerns about spreading the coronavirus in close-quarter conditions at the plant, labour advocates said.

"I was devastated because he has 14 grandkids that he's around. We were panicking like, 'Are our kids going to get sick? What is going on?'" Campbell, 31, said.

Campbell and her friends launched a social media campaign and organised a protest urging the shutdown of the plant. After weeks of rising community pressure, the Tyson plant suspended operations on April 22. More than 1,000 of its nearly 3,000 workers tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and the infection has spread to the wider community and caused 20 deaths, according to local authorities.

Now, in a major test of President Donald Trump's push to reopen the US economy, the Tyson plant in Waterloo is reopening even as COVID-19 case numbers continue to rise locally and nationwide. Workers and their families are fearful.

"A lot of people are on edge," Campbell told Al Jazeera.

Trump used a wartime law on April 28 to direct meatpacking plants nationwide to continue operating during the pandemic to avert food shortages. More than 170 meat and poultry processing plants nationwide have reported COVID-19 outbreaks, according to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

Before the coronavirus forced its shutdown, the Tyson plant in Waterloo slaughtered 19,500 hogs a day, producing 3.9 percent of the US pork supply. Farmers were forced to destroy their animals when the plant stopped running.

US President Donald Trump meeting with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC [Tom Brenner/Reuters] [Reuters]

On Wednesday, Iowa's Republican Governor Kim Reynolds joined the president at the White House to tout Iowa's progress in reopening meatpacking plants. Employees must get tested for the coronavirus before returning to work and are required to wear face masks and stay six feet apart, she noted.

"We are providing them the confidence of a safe environment, but at the same time we're making sure that food supply chain is moving and that the country is being fed," Reynolds told reporters at the White House.

But local officials see a bigger problem. With the virus spreading in communities, the state is not providing adequate testing and is not fully counting data on new cases, they say. Further, without monitoring and enforcement, reopening of the meatpacking plants is seen as an experiment in social distancing.

"It is irresponsible to downplay what is happening," said Ras Smith, who represents Waterloo in the Iowa state legislature.

"We are seeing outbreaks all over the state," Smith told Al Jazeera.

The Tyson pork processing plant, temporarily closed due to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Waterloo, Iowa [Brenna Norman/Reuters] [Reuters]

Major meatpacking plants in the Iowa cities of Columbus Junction, Tama, Estherville, Perry and West Liberty were forced to close last month because of the coronavirus. A pet food plant in Independence also has had cases, according to workers.

"Governor Reynolds is out of touch with the people of Iowa," Smith said.

Straddling a tributary of the Mississippi River flowing through the agricultural heart of the Midwest, Waterloo is a diverse city of 68,000 people. Nearly everyone in town knows someone who works at the local meatpacking plant. Most of the workers are people of colour or immigrants. Many are undocumented.

"I was enraged. I was incensed," said Tony Thompson, the sheriff of Black Hawk County after he visited the Tyson plant in early April.

Seeing conditions at the plant, "I knew they had just blown a hole out of the front-line of defence in our community," Thompson told Al Jazeera.

Thompson was one of 20 local officials who signed a letter to Tyson in mid-April asking the plant to shut down.

Now, most of the 1,600 confirmed cases in the Waterloo area can be traced to the plant, said the sheriff. And while Tyson has done an "impressive" job fitting the plant with dividers to separate employees on the processing line, "that in no way alleviates" the damage already done, he said.

Tyson invited workers to tour the newly outfitted plant on Wednesday and distributed a video illustrating the new social-distancing measures and health-monitoring procedures.



"We have been speaking with a lot of different workers," said Nilvia Reyes Rodriguez, a community organiser with the League of United Latin American Citizens Local 370 in Waterloo.

"With the reopening happening, there are concerns as to whether truly all of the measures can be implemented," Rodriguez told Al Jazeera.

"The way the production is currently run, they just feel that it is going to be hard to implement safety measures," she said.

Working conditions in the US meatpacking industry are difficult and dangerous. The killing floor where animals are executed before being processed is a brutal scene. Processing lines involve rapid, repetitive cutting motions that can lead to injuries. All of it takes place in a cold, refrigerated atmosphere.

The work pays low wages and is more often done by immigrants and minorities. As a result, workers' rights to safe working conditions are not well protected, and their latitude to speak up without being threatened is compromised, labour advocates said.


Coronavirus: US meat processing plants forced to close (2:02)

In Waterloo - where many of the meatpacking workers are Congolese immigrants and Burmese refugees - some feel their lives are being put at risk to keep up the national pork supply.

"A lot of people think that is still a tad bit too soon in light of what we think we know. The cases are still going up. We haven't even flatlined yet," said Abraham Funchess, director of the Waterloo Commission on Human Rights, which has opened an inquiry into what's happening at the Tyson plant.

"They are very reluctant about wanting to go back in because they realise they are risking their lives," Funchess said.

Trump is betting his re-election prospects in November on how the contest between the virus and reopening the economy in places like Iowa works out. In states like Iowa, control of the US Senate is in play.

Republican Joni Ernst, who has been quiet about the meatpacking issues in Iowa, is among several US senators who face difficult re-elections.

Despite the upbeat messages from Trump and Governor Reynolds, local officials said the state of Iowa is not putting in place the testing and monitoring measures needed to stop the pandemic.

Jonathan Grieder is a member of the Waterloo City Council and a high school teacher. He knows former students whose parents have died from COVID-19.

"It is very clear that essential workers - who are often paid very little, who are often from communities at risk, economically, politically and socially - are so essential but we are so willing to exploit them because it is bothersome for the rest of us with privilege to deal with this issue," Grieder told Al Jazeera.

"This has been an abject failure," he said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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USA

Coronavirus committee: Meat companies lied about impending shortage and put workers at risk

Parija Kavilanz -
CNN

At the height of the pandemic, as the coronavirus infected tens of thousands of meat industry workers and caused hundreds to die, executives at the nation’s largest meat producers were aware of the transmission risk in their plants and successfully lobbied the Trump White House and the USDA to circumvent coronavirus prevention measures and regulations, according to the latest findings of a congressional investigation.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which launched its probe in February 2021 into meatpackers’ Covid response, also found that meat processors’ warnings about the nation being on the brink of a meat shortage were not based in fact, and that industry experts at the time believed them to be intentionally misleading.

“The Select Subcommittee’s investigation has revealed that former President Trump’s political appointees at USDA collaborated with large meatpacking companies to lead an Administration-wide effort to force workers to remain on the job during the coronavirus crisis despite dangerous conditions, and even to prevent the imposition of commonsense mitigation measures,” committee chairman, US Rep. James Clyburn, said in a statement Thursday.

The North American Meat Institute, an industry trade group, criticized the committee’s report as “partisan” and said it “distorts the truth about the meat and poultry industry’s work to protect employees during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“The House Select Committee has done the nation a disservice. The Committee could have tried to learn what the industry did to stop the spread of Covid among meat and poultry workers, reducing positive cases associated with the industry while cases were surging across the country. Instead, the Committee uses 20/20 hindsight and cherry picks data to support a narrative that is completely unrepresentative of the early days of an unprecedented national emergency,” Julie Anna Potts, president and CEO of the North American Meat Institute, said in a statement.
Ignoring the risk

The investigation centered on meat producers Tyson (TSN), Smithfield, JBS USA, Cargill and National Beef along with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and its response to worker illnesses. Meat plants became a hotbed for Covid outbreaks in the first year of the pandemic as workers grappled with long hours in crowded work spaces.

The initial results of the probe, released last October, showed infections and deaths among workers in plants owned by those five companies in the first year of the pandemic were significantly higher than previously estimated, with over 59,000 workers infected and at least 269 deaths.

The report cited examples, based on Internal meatpacking industry documents, of at least one company ignoring warnings by a doctor of the risk of rapid transmission of the virus in their facilities.

For example, the report found that a JBS executive received an April 2020 email from a doctor in a hospital near JBS’ Cactus, Texas, facility saying, “100% of all Covid-19 patients we have in the hospital are either direct employees or family member[s] of your employees.” The doctor warned: “Your employees will get sick and may die if this factory continues to be open.”

The emails prompted Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s chief of staff to reach out to JBS, but it remains unclear whether JBS ever responded to the email, the report said.

“This coordinated campaign prioritized industry production over the health of workers and communities and contributed to tens of thousands of workers becoming ill, hundreds of workers dying, and the virus spreading throughout surrounding areas,” said Rep. Clyburn.

“The shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated,” he said.

In a response to CNN’s request for comment, JBS, in an email, did not address the doctors warning, highlighted by the committee.

“In 2020, as the world faced the challenge of navigating Covid-19, many lessons were learned, and the health and safety of our team members guided all our actions and decisions. During that critical time, we did everything possible to ensure the safety of our people who kept our critical food supply chain running,” said Nikki Richardson, a spokeswoman for JBS USA & Pilgrim’s.

The investigation surfaced examples of some meatpacking industry executives acknowledging that being transparent about the lax mitigation measures and high infections rates in plants would cause alarm.

The report, citing a company email, said on April 7, 2020, managers at National Beef discussed avoiding explicitly notifying workers when an infected plant worker returned to work with physician clearance, saying they should instead “announce line meeting style,” likely referring to announcements made during informal in-person huddles of production line workers, “hoping it doesn’t incite additional panic.”

Meatpacking companies and the United States Department of Agriculture “jointly lobbied the White House to dissuade workers from staying home or quitting,” according to the report.

Further, meatpacking companies successfully lobbied USDA officials to advocate for Department of Labor policies that deprived their employees of benefits if they chose to stay home or quit, while also seeking insulation from legal liability if their workers fell ill or died on the job, according to the report.

The probe found that in April 2020, the CEOs of JBS, Smithfield, Tyson and other meatpacking companies asked Trump cabinet member and then Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to “elevate the need for messaging about the importance of our workforce staying at work to the POTUS or VP level,” and to make clear that “being afraid of Covid-19 is not a reason to quit your job and you are not eligible for unemployment compensation if you do.”

On April 28th, 2020, President Trump signed an executive order directing meat packing plants to follow guidance being issued by the CDC and OSHA on how to keep workers safe, so processing plants could stay open

Sec. Perdue would later send a letter to governors and to the leaders of meat processing companies.

“Meat processing facilities are critical infrastructure and are essential to the national security of our nation. Keeping these facilities operational is critical to the food supply chain and we expect our partners across the country to work with us on this issue.”

The Committee report said meatpacking companies and lobbyists worked with USDA and the White House in an attempt to prevent state and local health departments from regulating coronavirus precautions in plants.

Calling the contents of the report deeply disturbling, a spokesperson for the USDA said “many of the decisions made by the previous administration are not in line with our values. This administration is committed to food safety, the viability of the meat and poultry sector and working with our partners across the government to protect workers and ensure their health and safety is given the priority it deserves.”

A spokesman for Perdue, who is currently Chancellor of the University of Georgia, said Perdue “is focused on his new position serving the students of Georgia” and did not provide a comment on the committee report.

Former President Trump has not responded to CNN Business’ request for comment.
False claims of impending meat shortage

As their workers fell ill with the virus, several meat suppliers were forced to temporarily shut plants in 2020 and their companies’ executives warned the situation would put the US meat supply at risk.

The report slammed those warnings as “flimsy if not outright false.”

“Just three days after Smithfield CEO Ken Sullivan publicly warned that the closure of a Smithfield plant was ‘pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our nation’s meat supply,” he asked industry representatives to issue a statement that ‘there was plenty of meat, enough … to export,” while Smithfield told meat importers the same, the report said.

The investigation found industry representatives thought Smithfield’s statements about a meat supply crunch were “intentionally scaring people.”

At the time, food experts told CNN Business that while there were meat shortages, at times, various cuts of meat might not be available.

Tyson said via an email response that it was reviewing the report.

Smithfield said it took “every appropriate measure to keep our workers safe” when it encountered a “first-of-its-kind challenge” two years ago.

“To date, we have invested more than $900 million to support worker safety, including paying workers to stay home, and have exceeded CDC and OSHA guidelines,” Smithfield spokesman Jim Monroe, said in an email to CNN Business.

“The meat production system is a modern wonder, but it is not one that can be re-directed at the flip of a switch. That is the challenge we faced as restaurants closed, consumption patterns changed and hogs backed-up on farms with nowhere to go. The concerns we expressed were very real and we are thankful that a true food crisis was averted and that we are starting to return to normal…. Did we make every effort to share with government officials our perspective on the pandemic and how it was impacting the food production system? Absolutely,” he said.

Cargill and National Beef could not immediately be reached for comment.

The committee said its report was based on more than 151,000 pages of documents collected from meatpacking companies and interest groups, calls with meatpacking workers, union representatives, and former USDA and OSHA officials, among others.

– CNN Business’ Jennifer Korn contributed to this report

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Emails Show the Meatpacking Industry Drafted an Executive Order to Keep Plants Open

Hundreds of emails offer a rare look at the meat industry’s influence and access to the highest levels of government. The draft was submitted a week before Trump’s executive order, which bore striking similarities.


by Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung Sept. 14


ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In late April, as COVID-19 raced through meatpacking plants sickening and killing workers, President Donald Trump issued a controversial executive order aimed at keeping the plants open to supply food to American consumers.

It was a relief for the nation’s meatpackers who were being urged, or ordered, to suspend production by local health officials worried about the spread of the coronavirus.

But emails obtained by ProPublica show that the meat industry may have had a hand in its own White House rescue: Just a week before the order was issued, the meat industry’s trade group drafted an executive order that bears striking similarities to the one the president signed.

The draft that Julie Anna Potts, the president of the North American Meat Institute, sent to top officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture was written using the framework of an official executive order and stressed the importance of the food supply chain and how outbreaks had reduced production — themes later addressed in the president’s order.

It invoked the president’s powers under a Korean War-era law known as the Defense Production Act and proposed that the president make a simple and straightforward proclamation: “I hereby order that critical infrastructure food companies continue their operations to the fullest extent possible.”

Highlights added by ProPublica

What happened next within the USDA and White House isn’t clear from the records. The USDA declined to answer questions, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. But while the final wording wasn’t verbatim, Trump’s order emphasized the points the industry had proposed and furthered the same goal, directing the agriculture secretary to take action “to ensure that meat and poultry processors continue operations.”

The order provided a lifeline for meatpacking companies stressed by dozens of plant closures, severe staffing shortages and supply chain disruptions that would cause fast food restaurants to run out of hamburgers and grocery stores to ration meat purchases.

But it has also generated significant criticism from labor unions and Democratic senators who said it prioritized the bottom line of the nation’s meatpackers over the health of their workers.

The executive order effectively provided a justification, sanctioned by the White House, for meat companies to continue operations even as tens of thousands of the industry’s workers contracted the disease.

“It certainly gives rise to at least the appearance of favoritism that the executive order was done not because the White House thought it was the right thing to do but because they were getting pressure from outside groups that wanted it done,” said Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Highlights added by ProPublica

In a statement, Potts said that the meat institute had been working as a liaison between the government and industry on many issues related to COVID-19. “Trade associations of all types routinely suggest legislative language, comment on proposed rules, and other provisions that are shared with the government,” she said.

The documents obtained by ProPublica offer a rare look at the process of drafting an executive order and a glimpse into the meat industry’s influence and access to the highest levels of government. Such political support has been crucial for the industry, which had dismissed years of warnings from the federal government to plan for a pandemic, sowing chaos in rural communities as they battled local health departments over outbreaks in their plants.

The draft executive order was one of hundreds of emails between the companies, industry groups and top officials at the USDA since March. Together, they show that throughout the coronavirus crisis, the meatpacking industry has repeatedly turned to the agency for help beating back local public health orders and loosening regulations to keep processing lines running.

While special interest groups often submit draft legislation and regulations to policymakers, legal experts said executive orders are less common and aren’t subject to the same public scrutiny.

In interviews, former White House lawyers from Democratic and Republican administrations said that there is great latitude in how executive orders are generated and it wasn’t unusual for private interest groups of all types to promote their causes by pushing for an executive order. It is also reasonable for the White House to seek input from outside entities during the process. But there would typically be an effort to consult a range of parties who might be affected by it before the order received legal scrutiny, they said. The quick seven-day turnaround, even amid an emergency like COVID-19, is notable, some said.

“All policy is shaped by people who have a stake in it,” said Rakesh Kilaru, associate counsel and special assistant to President Barack Obama from 2015 to 2017. “But I can’t think of something that was so direct between the stakeholder asking for action and getting it.”

Highlights added by ProPublica

Jonathan Adler, a constitutional and administrative law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said there’s nothing “inherently inappropriate” about the industry helping to draft the order. “The concern is that, in a case like this, if the executive order is slanted to a particular interest rather than the public at large,” he said.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents workers responsible for the majority of U.S. beef and pork production, said no one from the White House or the USDA sought its input before the executive order was issued.

Mark Lauritsen, the UFCW’s director of food processing, packing and manufacturing, said he believes the Meat Institute “along with some of the other bigger players in the industry pulled every lever they could.”

The order has been effective as a political tool because it is widely perceived to have far more legal force than it actually does. From a legal standpoint, the executive order gave Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue additional power to issue his own orders related to the food supply — something he hasn’t done.

But many state and local health officials view the order as superseding their authority or decided to back off in the face of political pressure from the Trump administration. Within a week of the executive order, the USDA was working with companies and local health authorities to reopen shuttered plants. With workers back on the line, operations ramped up again. Pork production, for example, had fallen by more than half by the end of April, causing steep financial losses. But by early June, meatpacking plants were nearly back to capacity.

Since the order, however, COVID-19 infections among meatpacking workers have multiplied. To date, there have been more than 43,000 cases and at least 195 deaths among meatpacking employees, according to data compiled by ProPublica from public health agencies and news reports.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that almost from the start of the crisis, the meatpacking industry and the USDA were largely focused on how to keep workers on the line.

Highlights added by ProPublica

In March, governors across the country tried to stem the spread of COVID-19 with shelter-in-place orders, coming up with their own varied lists of essential industries. Companies were sometimes faced with unclear and conflicting directives. This was especially true in meatpacking, a highly consolidated industry where a handful of companies run multiple operations across the country with hundreds of employees working side by side.

To seek clarity, 60 food and agricultural trade groups sent a letter on March 18 to federal, state and local officials asking for exemptions from curfews and public gathering bans so they could keep their businesses running. Copies of the letter were sent to the White House and members of Congress, and Tyson Foods circulated it among several governors.

The next day, the Department of Homeland Security issued guidance and noted Trump’s previous comments that “if you work in a critical infrastructure industry, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security, such as healthcare services and pharmaceutical and food supply, you have a special responsibility to maintain your normal work schedule.”

But the meatpacking companies soon found themselves facing another hurdle. By April, waves of workers who debone chickens or carve up pork elbow-to-elbow with their co-workers were falling ill from the virus. Some feared coming to work while others walked out of plants to protest the lack of infection control measures.

With plant slowdowns came a backlog of pigs, cows and chickens waiting for slaughter. Millions of animals had to be euthanized.

As some plants partially suspended operations or contemplated closing because of staffing shortages, Potts of the Meat Institute arranged an April 3 call between Perdue and top executives of major meatpacking firms Tyson, Smithfield Foods, Hormel, JBS, Seaboard and Cargill. Before the call, Potts emailed the USDA’s undersecretary for food safety, Mindy Brashears, with a list of discussion topics, including clear messaging that employees who failed to show up for work because they were scared would not qualify for unemployment benefits.

“I want to re-emphasize that the slowdowns and shutdowns you heard described today are significant and getting worse each day,” Potts wrote in a follow-up email. “Hearing a strong and consistent message from the President or Vice President like that delivered by the Governor of Nebraska yesterday is vital: being afraid of COVID-19 is not a reason to quit your job and you are not eligible for unemployment compensation if you do.”

Highlights added by ProPublica

Two days later, the Labor Department, which had been hearing similar complaints from across the business community, issued guidance clarifying that workers who quit to avoid contracting the disease wouldn’t receive jobless benefits.

As outbreaks overwhelmed hospitals in April, pressure from local public officials grew, leading to the rapid-fire closures of some of the nation’s largest slaughterhouses.

The threat of closure led the meatpacking industry to ramp up its efforts to seek intervention not only from the USDA but from other government officials as well. Emails obtained by ProPublica show that as state and local health officials sought to order JBS to shut down its Greeley, Colorado, plant, the company appealed to Gov. Jared Polis and then to Vice President Mike Pence.

State health director Jill Hunsaker Ryan told the head of the county Health Department that she had received a call from Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“JBS was in touch with the VP who had Director Redfield call me,” she wrote in an email, first reported by The Denver Post. “They want us to use CDC’s critical infrastructure guidance, (sending asymptomatic people back to work even if we suspect exposure but they have no symptoms) even with the outbreak at present level.”

JBS said that it reached out to Pence because it was “receiving guidance from local authorities that conflicted with federal CDC guidance,” but that it ultimately agreed to shut down the plant to “stop any potential chain of infection.”

Tyson and National Beef made similar appeals to the Kansas Department of Agriculture when the state Health Department wanted workers to stay off the line for two weeks if they had come in contact with a positive COVID-19 case, public records first reported by The Kansas City Star and The Wichita Eagle show. The state’s secretary of agriculture coordinated with meat companies and the director of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, who then agreed to follow the less-strict CDC guidance.

Despite these varied efforts to keep plants open, absenteeism and public health orders continued to cripple production lines. Government experts had long predicted a pandemic would cause food shortages. And those worst-case scenarios were now playing out.

The major meat and agriculture trade groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Meat Institute, wanted the White House to get directly involved in preventing plant closures.

In an April 17 letter to Trump, they detailed the disruptions caused by plant closures and the inconsistency of health and safety actions from state to state — a point later echoed in the executive order.

“To ensure livestock producers, poultry growers, and all food processors and their workers can continue to feed the nation,” they wrote, “we respectfully request you emphasize the importance of allowing critical infrastructure food companies to responsibly and safely continue their operations to the fullest extent possible without undue disruption.”

For emphasis, Potts of the Meat Institute followed up with an email to Stephen Censky, the USDA’s deputy secretary, who led the American Soybean Association before joining the Trump administration. She attached the letter to Trump and added, “The situation is continuing to get worse and worse at the local level (it’s hard to overstate how dire it is) and I want to explore with you what might be possible as a tool to help.”

Early the next morning, Potts had a call with top officials from the USDA, and shortly after 9 a.m., she sent them an email, writing: “Attached is a draft EO for consideration.”

Highlights added by ProPublica

The records don’t include a reply, and White House and internal deliberative agency conversations are exempt from public records laws, making it difficult to verify how much or little influence the meat industry’s draft had on the final executive order.

But over the next week, the drumbeat for action on behalf of the food and agriculture sector continued. Governors from the poultry producing states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia wrote to Trump asking for the designation of one federal agency to lead on COVID-19 and poultry workers, access to protective equipment and financial relief for farmers and companies. Industry representatives convened a call with the USDA, the Food and Drug Administration and DHS about the impending disaster facing farmers, who would need to mass euthanize their animals if plants remained shuttered. In that conversation, utilizing the Defense Production Act was discussed, according to an industry representative on the call. Tyson took out a full-page ad in major newspapers to warn that the food supply chain was breaking.

Even on the day the executive order was issued, there was still a flurry of activity to get the White House to help the meat industry. That afternoon, records show, the director of the Washington office for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper forwarded a letter from pork producers to his counterparts in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado and Pennsylvania to ask their opinion on it and whether their governors were going to sign on.

The draft letter, addressed to Pence, asks for his help in invoking the Defense Production Act to assist in “the humane euthanasia of animals,” to indemnify farmers and pork producers and to “utilize every authority available to keep plants open.”

A representative from Michigan said her state would pass, noting the lack of worker protection language in the letter, while an aide to Pennsylvania’s governor cited the need for “advocacy on behalf of all sectors.”

On April 28, a week after Potts sent the suggested language for an executive order, Trump issued the “Executive Order on Delegating Authority Under the DPA with Respect to Food Supply Chain Resources During the National Emergency Caused by the Outbreak of COVID-19.”

Trump’s final order reflects what the meat industry had been requesting for weeks as the pandemic had unfolded: “It is important that processors of beef, pork, and poultry (‘meat and poultry’) in the food supply chain continue operating and fulfilling orders to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans.”

It also notes that “recent actions in some States have led to the complete closure of some large processing facilities” and that such closures “threaten the continued functioning of the national meat and poultry supply chain, undermining critical infrastructure during the national emergency.”


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Government officials predicted a pandemic would threaten critical businesses and warned them to prepare. Meatpacking companies largely ignored them.

The order invokes the Defense Production Act and orders the agriculture secretary to “take all appropriate action under that section to ensure that meat and poultry processors continue operations consistent with the guidance for their operations jointly issued by the CDC” and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

It had immediate effect.

In June, the Bear River Health Department in northern Utah, where nearly 400 JBS workers have tested positive for COVID-19, told the press it couldn’t shut the plant down because of the executive order.

In Virginia, state health officials had initially recommended that poultry companies close their plants for two weeks, “allowing deep cleaning and allowing symptomatic and asymptomatic infected workers to run their course of disease and recover,” records obtained under a separate public records request show. But the state backed off “to maintain the critical food production infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, meat companies and their trade groups continued to seek help from the USDA when public health officials tried to take action.

The day after the executive order was announced, the National Chicken Council wrote to the USDA with complaints that the county Health Department in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was requiring testing of all employees at poultry plants in the area. This would have the effect of closing down the plants, the trade group warned, because they were already short-staffed and testing could cause fear among the remaining workers.

Weeks later, the Chicken Council wrote that local officials were threatening plant closures and issuing public notices because they believed the plants were “operating with an imminent health hazard.”

“We want to push back on 100% testing and would like your assistance,” the trade group wrote.

The Chicken Council didn’t return calls or emails seeking comment.

Smithfield also went to the USDA for help dealing with a local public Health Department in Kane County, Illinois, which had closed the plant days before Trump’s executive order was issued. “The Kane County Illinois health department continues to be a challenge regarding our St. Charles processing facility,” Michael Skahill, Smithfield’s vice president of government affairs, wrote to Brashears, the USDA’s undersecretary for food safety. “I really did not want to have to get you involved but it has now come to the point where we need you to referee.”

Asked why it had gone to the USDA to intervene, Keira Lombardo, Smithfield’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, said: “We are a leading American agriculture company. Considering that fact, why wouldn’t we engage with the United States Department of Agriculture amid an unprecedented pandemic?”

Two days after Skahill’s plea for help, Smithfield continued to press the issue. Amy McClure, Smithfield’s associate general counsel, wrote to Brashears again, this time citing a central tenet of the executive order. “To reiterate our conversation, our St. Charles plant in Kane County, Illinois is in an urgent situation,” McClure wrote. “We need to reopen to prevent further disruption in the nation’s food supply.”

Six hours later, Brashears and her chief of staff received a grateful email from Skahill. “Thank you for your support today with the Smithfield St. Charles Kane County issue,” he wrote. “I think we have a resolution that will allow us to process next week and put protein on America’s table.”

Do you have access to information about COVID-19’s spread in the meatpacking industry or the government’s response that should be public? Email michael.grabell@propublica.org or bernice.yeung@propublica.org. Here’s how to send tips and documents to ProPublica securely.

Mollie Simon and Claire Perlman contributed reporting. Graphics by Moiz Syed.