Costco Meatpacking Worker: "We’re All Worried About Getting Sick"

As concerns about a meat shortage mount, a meatpacking worker discusses her fear of getting the coronavirus while still needing to work.

Melissa Segura BuzzFeed News Reporter May 8, 2020

Nati Harnik / AP
Workers process chickens at the Lincoln Premium Poultry plant in Fremont, Nebraska, in 2019.

Costco announced Monday that it would be limiting the amount of meat and poultry each customer would be allowed to purchase because supplies had been affected by coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants. On that same day, the first worker at one of Costco’s poultry producers, Lincoln Premium Poultry, died of COVID-19. The worker was one of 28 diagnosed at the Fremont, Nebraska, plant, which employs 1,100 workers, most of them immigrants.

With some plants closing because of the spread of the coronavirus, President Donald Trump has classified meat processing as critical infrastructure in a move to keep plants open and safeguard the nation’s food supply. The CDC reported nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers in 115 facilities across the country tested positive in April. At least 20 have died.

BuzzFeed News spoke with an employee of the Fremont plant. She asked that we not use her name for fear of retaliation by the company; BuzzFeed verified she worked for the company by checking her employee identification.

The employee arrived in the United States from Central America more than 10 years ago. She is an unauthorized immigrant who has mostly worked in meatpacking plants since arriving in the US. BuzzFeed News talked with her about what it’s like going to work in one of the virus’s hot spots, what she and her colleagues are talking about, and why she keeps showing up despite the dangers.

Below is an edited transcript of that conversation, translated from Spanish to English.

I know about 18 of the people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the Lincoln Premium Poultry plant where I work.

They say the virus feels like death. That it brings about this deep cold in your body. Everyone says stay in your house, but if I stay in my house, how am I going to survive?

It’s a question without an answer.

I don’t feel safe going to work. Before the virus, I used to get to work early to start my 5 a.m. shift. Now I struggle to get to the plant. I worry about getting sick and bringing the virus home to my three children.

Fortunately I work in an area where we have a good amount of space, not like the place where they kill the chickens. In that area, they’re practically on top of one another. I stand at one of three conveyor belts where 120 chickens pass per minute. They’re mostly clean by the time they get to me, without their feathers. I look for the chickens that look purple or still have feathers and take them off of the belt. I make $16 per hour doing that. Sometimes if someone is missing, I’ll go to the area where they cut the chickens’ necks.

I first heard of the outbreak at Lincoln from Facebook. There were posts from the City of Fremont and from the media about the virus. Then when five people had been diagnosed with the virus, we had small meetings where supervisors told us to make an extra effort not to get too close to one another, not to touch our faces. The company put up dividers to separate us at the round tables in the lunchroom. They say they’re sanitizing the plant in the early morning hours, but people continue being contagious.

At Lincoln Premium Poultry, the majority of us are Latinos. For those of us who are unauthorized immigrants, in reality, there are very few jobs we can do. The owner of the plant smiles and says, “Without Latinos this plant wouldn’t exist.” That’s something [Trump] doesn’t value — the help that Latinos provide. We talk about the government a lot at the plant. Trump declared that meatpacking plants had to stay open; he doesn’t think of the workers, right? It’s when you go to the store that you see the importance of what we do. If we didn’t go to work, you wouldn’t have those products in the store.


Icon Sportswire / Getty Images

Chicken refrigerator cases inside a Costco Wholesale Club on March 13 in East Hanover, New Jersey.

But it’s really hurtful, for example, that I’ve been in the United States for more than 10 years and I’ve paid all my taxes and the government doesn’t recognize it. The government is giving money to a lot of people but as an unauthorized immigrant, I don’t qualify for anything.

We’re all worried about getting sick. Last week, I wasn’t feeling well and had to go to get tested. I had to stay home from work until the coronavirus test came back. I didn’t have the coronavirus.

Everyone is asking one another, “Do you think you’ll keep coming to work?” No one wants to fall behind on their bills. There are lots of people working because of that.

Since the virus, the company realizes that we’re falling behind on production. Now they’re offering us overtime. Logically, the more time we spend at work, the more likely we are to get sick. A lot of people in the plant are saying, if the coronavirus kills us, who are the ones who are going to die of hunger?

Response from Lincoln Premium Poultry: Spokesperson Jessica Kolterman listed a variety of measures to keep workers healthy and assist those who are sick. She said the company provides masks to employees and hand sanitizer in designated areas of the plant. In other areas, 20-second handwashing is required. Plant doors are propped open in areas to assist with ventilation but are not opened in zones where doing so would compromise food safety or violate regulations. Kolterman said that Lincoln provides sick pay, that those employees who test positive for the coronavirus are paid, and that days missed from work do not count against the sick leave that works accrue. The company will pay a $2-per-hour bonus in May for those who have worked during the pandemic. Additionally, the company says it provides housing and meals for workers who are ill or who are healthy but don’t want to risk infecting members of their households.

Melissa Segura is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New Mexico. Melissa Segura at melissa.segura@buzzfeed.com.

RED BETWEEN THE LINES --- WASHINGTON POST---JBS MEAT PACKING EXPOSE

CONCENTRATION IN THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY BEGAN AT THE END OF THE SEVENTIES AND CONTINUED THROUGH THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES AS CONCENTRATION MOVED TO MONOPOLY THE MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY ALSO BEGAN A FULL SCALE ASSAULT ON HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS, CREATING TWO TIER WAGES WHICH THEY ATTACKED THE UFCW WITH, USE OF FOREIGN TEMPORARY WORKERS AND IN MANY CASES THE UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS WERE USED AFTER THE RONALD REAGAN'S ASSAULT ON UNIONS LEFT THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY ABLE TO NOW BRING IN UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS AS TEMP WORKERS.

BUT THE UFCW FOUGHT BACK IN CANADA AND THE USA. THEY ORGANIZED THOSE WORKERS IN CARGILL PLANTS, EVEN IF IT TOOKS DECADES OF STRUGGLE AS IT DID IN ALBERTA WITH THE UFCW ORGANIZING THEIR
PLANT IN SOUTHERN ALBERTA, WITH WORKERS FROM ECUADOR, SOMALIA,
ETHIOPIA, AND OTHER COUNTRIES IN AN ALL WHITE MORMON TOWN.

I WROTE OF THE EARLY CONSOLIDATION AND THE CONCENTRATION OF THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY IN CANADA DURING THE UFCW MEAT PACKERS STRIKE OF 1978 AND WE PUBLISHED A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE MELIORIST THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE STUDENT PAPER AND HAD IT DISTRIBUTED TO EVERY HOUSEHOLD IN THE CITY VIA THE POST OFFICE.

THIS STORY OF CONSOLIDATION AND MONOPOLY CAPITALISM IN THE MEATPACKING INDUSTRY IS THE SAME STORY IT HAS BEEN FOR FORTY YEARS

JBS IN CANADA

A NUMBER OF YEARS BACK JBS BOUGHT A FAILED AND CONTAMINATED MEATPACKING HOUSE IN LETHBRIDGE. AFTER IT WAS CLOSED FOR AN E-COLI OUTBREAK IT HAD CREATED BY FAILED SELF REGULATION OF CLEANING AND DISINFECTION PROCEDURES VITAL TO FOOD SAFETY. IT WAS A MAJOR SCANDAL ACROSS CANADA. AND JBS SWOOPED IN AS A ANGEL INVESTOR TO SAVE THE DAY BUT OF COURSE IT WAS IN FACT THE VULTURE CAPITALISM AT WORK ONCE AGAIN FOR A MULTINATIONAL FOOD MONOPOLY.

#JBS COMPETES IN CANADA WITH MAPLE LEAF FOODS IN A MEAT PACKING FOOD INDUSTRY DUOPOLY

This foreign meat company got U.S. tax money. 

Now it wants to conquer America.

President Trump delivers remarks in support of farmers and ranchers at the White House in May. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


By Kimberly Kindy Washington Post

November 7, 2019

This story has been updated.Two men in cowboy hats stood behind President Trump in May as he announced a $16 billion agricultural bailout. Trump said the financial relief from his trade war with China would help American farmers, reinforcing an earlier tweet when the president said the funds would help “great Patriot Farmers.”

But not all beneficiaries of the taxpayer-funded program are American farmers or patriots. JBS, a Brazilian company that is the largest meat producer in the world, has received $78 million in government pork contracts funded with the bailout funds — more than any other U.S. pork producer.

JBS’s winning hand in securing a quarter of all of the pork bailout contracts is one example of the power a small number of multinational meat companies now hold in the United States. JBS has become a major player in the United States even as it faces price-fixing and other investigations from the federal government.

The company’s explosive growth through acquisitions over the past decade has been a dominant factor in the consolidation of the meat industry by multinational companies.

A dozen years ago, JBS did not own a single U.S. meat plant. Today, JBS and three other food companies control about 85 percent of beef production. JBS and Tyson Foods control about 40 percent of the poultry market. And JBS and three other companies control nearly 70 percent of the pork market.

JBS and the large multinational meat companies, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and Cargill, use their size and global presence to create efficiencies that enable them to produce a variety of quality foods at a lower price. But many agricultural economists and food marketing analysts say when so few companies control the market, they can drive smaller operators out of business, reducing competition and sometimes raising prices for consumers.

[Trump farm bailout money will go to Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm, USDA says]

Such consolidation has been condemned by eight Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) being the most outspoken. She’s pledged to break up the larger food and meat companies because the companies can use their “economic power to spend unlimited sums of money electing and manipulating politicians” and because they are “leaving family farmers with fewer choices, thinner margins and less independence.”

The candidates have other concerns, including threats to the availability and affordability of the nation’s food supply. Large food companies have in the past reduced supply to drive up the price of their products. The Justice Department is investigating whether JBS and other poultry companies illegally coordinated to do just that.

JBS said in a written statement that its American subsidiary, JBS USA, is a vital part of the agricultural economy. The company employs more than 60,000 people in the United States and buys from more than 11,000 U.S. farmers and ranchers. JBS and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue say the bailout funds JBS received are helping American farmers because the company buys its hogs from them.

“This is no different than people buying Volkswagens or other foreign autos where their executives may have been guilty of some issue along the way,” Perdue said in a statement. “They still buy the cars.”

JBS CEO Gilberto Tomazoni told analysts in August that JBS is “at the best moment in its history.” He said an upcoming stock offering in the United States will allow the company to continue to expand; JBS says expansion efforts “will better position the company to sustainably meet evolving customer and consumer expectations.”

However, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) recently challenged whether JBS’s entry into the U.S. market should have been allowed.

USDA pilot program fails to stop contaminated meat

Corruption scandals have engulfed JBS in Brazil, the senators wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and company officials have “admitted criminal conduct to secure loans that were used for investment in the United States.” They’ve asked for a review of the purchases.

JBS said it received all “necessary regulatory approvals from the . . . antitrust authorities, including the Department of Justice” before purchasing each of the companies. 

Small farmers and cattlemen are glad some politicians are listening. They say the federal government’s bailout — and JBS’s share of it — are reminiscent of the bank bailouts during the Great Recession. Even though many of the banks were under investigation by the federal government, they still received federal money.

“I think it’s one of those situations where it’s too big to fail,” said Greg Gunthorp, who runs his family hog farm in Indiana. “We are talking about a company that has shown it doesn’t play by the rules.”

Buying spree

JBS purchased its first U.S. meat plants in 2007, using Brazilian bank loans the owners secured illegally, court records show. In a plea deal, brothers Joesley and Wesley Batista told prosecutors how they bribed bank and government officials to receive low-interest loans.

The bank loans and other funding allowed JBS to consolidate five U.S. companies — which produced pork, poultry and beef — into a single company, JBS USA.

In 2007, JBS bought pork and beef producer Swift and Co. In 2008, it purchased the beef operations of Smithfield Foods. In 2009, it acquired poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride. In 2015, JBS bought Cargill’s pork division. And in 2017, the company purchased poultry producer GNP Co.

“JBS used their ill-gotten gains to dominate the meat market,” said Joe Maxwell, a fourth-generation hog farmer and executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a nonprofit group that fights income disparities in U.S. agricultural markets. The loans, Maxwell said, “allowed them to become the big dogs almost overnight.”

JBS said it did not rebut the plea deal but said it also raised capital by selling company stock.

The bailout payments underscore JBS’s advantage over smaller domestic competitors. Some of its pork plants kill more than 1,000 pigs an hour, enabling JBS to operate off a slimmer profit margin and underbid other companies for the bailout contracts.

JBS is also able to shift production to avoid high tariffs. While U.S. pork exported to China faces a 72 percent tariff, pork from JBS plants in Brazil faces only a 10 to 12 percent tariff.

JBS increased production where tariffs were lower, benefiting twice from the Chinese trade war — first by collecting the bailout money and then by increasing pork production at its plants outside the United States, which JBS announced this year.

How beef demand is accelerating the Amazon’s deforestation and climate peril

JBS has grown and thrived despite multiple federal inquiries. The Agriculture Department said JBS underpaid family farmers and ranchers last year at three slaughterhouses in Colorado, Nebraska and Texas by claiming the cattle weighed less than they did. Domestic cattle owners say they lost millions of dollars.

USDA fined JBS $79,000.

Cattle producers said the fine was an insult to small ranchers. “That’s pennies to them,” said Steve Krajicek, an independent cattle producer who sells to JBS. “They make in excess of $1 million a day at the Nebraska plants. It’s not even enough for them to blink an eye or to reconsider how they are doing business.”

JBS said a software change caused an error in paying sellers and those who were underpaid were later reimbursed.

JBS’s growth has not been slowed by heftier fines for worker safety violations — about $20 million over the past decade, according to records from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

A Washington Post analysis of OSHA data from 2015 to 2018 shows that JBS has the highest rate of serious worker injuries — including those involving amputation and hospitalization — among meat companies in the United States, and the second highest rate of serious injuries among all companies in the United States.

The Post used federal data on the number of serious worker injuries and the number of employees to determine the injury rates. JBS disagreed with The Post’s methodology and said JBS was better than the industry average in other safety metrics using federal data, such as time lost because of injury.

Consumer concerns

Consolidation can lead to benefits for consumers. Trey Malone, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University, said consolidation has led to lower prices and an explosion of new food products. A grocery store in 1995 had about 8,000 options on average. Now, it’s more than 45,000.

“As companies get larger, you get economies of scale. The cost of production per unit decreases,” Malone said. “Companies increasingly compete at quality levels, offering hormone-free meat, Angus beef. They create new products. From a consumer perspective, you have higher quality meat and cheaper meat products.”

But the small number of major players increases the possibility that companies could collude to increase prices, Malone and other economists say. A lawsuit filed in 2016 by a food service firm in New York alleges that JBS-owned Pilgrim’s Pride and other poultry companies intentionally destroyed flocks of breeder hens to reduce the poultry supply.

The coordinated effort resulted in a 50 percent increase in the wholesale price of broiler chickens, the lawsuit claims. The civil suit is on hold as the Justice Department investigates.

JBS denied the accusations in the lawsuit. Lawyers for Pilgrim’s Pride and other poultry companies filed a motion to dismiss the case in January.

JBS said concentration in the meat industry has been “fairly static” since the mid-1990s. Analysts point to data showing the market has become more concentrated; they say companies with plants and processing facilities around the world increasingly dominate.

“This is a consumer disaster because of the amount of power, money and political clout that these companies hold,” said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor who studies the food industry. “If you own everything, you get to set the rules, you get to set the price, because there is no real competition.”

[Inspector General wants to know if USDA concealed worker safety data]

With a few large operators, meat contamination can pose a greater threat because their products end up on plates across the nation. Retail giants Costco, Walmart and Sysco all sell JBS products.

For example, in 2018, JBS ordered the largest recall of ground beef in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 12 million pounds of beef contaminated with a virulent strain of salmonella in 30 states sickened 403 people, of whom 117 were hospitalized. Less than 2 percent of the meat was recovered.

“They can cause a major food safety disaster,” said Tony Corbo, senior lobbyist for Food & Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group. “These plants are bigger, turn out product faster and the federal government has deregulated them, giving plant owners more control over safety inspections.”

JBS said it quickly responded by issuing the recall. The company said it was working with “internal and external food safety experts” to “ensure the safety of our products.”

Rancher complaints

Small cattle ranchers launched a social media campaign in October at a rally called “Stop the Stealin’ ” to protest the power JBS and other large beef processors have over setting prices for cattle. Ranchers said they are being underpaid by about $200 a head. JBS said it offers competitive prices for cattle.

About 400 cattlemen and women attended the rally in Nebraska — some riding on horseback. Younger ranchers downloaded the Twitter app onto the smartphones of the older ranchers, teaching them how to tweet their protests directly to Trump.

“Stop packer collusion!!” tweeted Casey Perman, a small rancher in South Dakota. “Time to help the little guy like you promised . . . #FairCattleMarkets @realDonaldTrump.”

The ranchers and some Democratic members of Congress say the concentrated power of these companies gives them too much leverage over federal regulators. “These multinational corporations are taking over the food supply and federal government has been complicit in this; USDA has been complicit in this,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.).

Since entering the U.S. market in 2007, JBS has spent more than $7.7 million on lobbying, records show, making it the fourth-largest spender in the meat processing industry. It’s also won more than $900 million in government meat contracts, second only to the U.S.-based Tyson Foods, according to a Post analysis of government records.

The company’s reach into the federal government includes the successful recruitment of a top regulator. JBS created a new position — global head of food safety and quality assurance — in 2017, giving the post to a former top food-safety regulator at USDA named Al Almanza.

At USDA, Almanza was viewed by small farmers and food safety groups as an advocate for the big producers; he led efforts to deregulate poultry, pork and beef inspections sought by JBS and other large companies. Three days after leaving USDA, Almanza started at JBS.

In a statement, JBS said Almanza “strongly disagrees with any notion that he had any interest in maximizing industry profits over safeguarding public health during his career of public service.”

Maxwell’s group is also focusing on Perdue and the bailout money he has awarded to JBS. The small ranchers’ campaign is circulating a political cartoon of Perdue and JBS’s Wesley Batista in bed together with Perdue throwing wads of bailout cash into the air.

Andrew Ba Tran and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

 

After enduring ‘complete hell’ during pandemic, food workers face obstacles getting COVID-19 vaccinations

“Vaccinating our essential farmworkers will ensure the safety of their workplaces, their homes, their families, our food supply, and the vital services that they perform.”

By

 Leah Douglas

 -

February 1, 2021Common Dreams

The thousands of workers who pick, pack, and process our food have become eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine in many states. But they still face obstacles to actually getting the vaccine, as companies sort out their vaccination policies and advocates struggle to secure enough doses for a workforce that ranks among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Labor organizations and the food industry spent months pushing for agricultural and food processing workers to be in early distribution phases of the Covid-19 vaccine. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that agricultural workers be vaccinated in Phase 1b, and many states have followed suit.

Yet with the vaccine rollout moving slowly because of continued shortages and with some states shuffling around their priority populations, there are still unanswered questions about how and whether the vaccines will actually get to workers and about what role food manufacturers will play in getting shots into arms.

Florida is now requiring vaccine recipients to show state driver’s licenses or proof of residence, potentially excluding the state’s 200,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers

Meanwhile, food system workers are still contracting the virus at workplaces across the country. More than 85,500 food and farmworkers have contracted Covid-19 and at least 368 have died as of Jan. 27, according to FERN’s tracker. Nearly 7,000 cases have been added to the database since the beginning of January, even with just a few states regularly reporting data.

Kristy Tijerina, a worker at a JBS meatpacking plant in Plainwell, Michigan, says it’s essential that the vaccine be allocated to the industry’s workers as quickly as possible. At her plant, at least 88 workers have contracted the virus and one has died. Tijerina herself contracted Covid-19 in the spring, and her father died of the virus in August.

“It’s just getting really bad right now,” she says of the case rates in her community. “The more everybody gets vaccinated, it’s a lot better for everybody working here together.”

One obstacle to expediently vaccinating food workers is the still-changing prioritization of essential workers in states’ vaccination phases. Amy Liebman, director of environmental and occupational health at the Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN), which has been supporting local health systems in vaccinating farmworkers, says it’s “been a disappointment” seeing food and farmworkers still unable to access vaccines in many states, given their high risk of contracting Covid-19.

“First and foremost, we need the doses,” Liebman says.

In California, home to as many as 800,000 farmworkers, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently shifted the state’s vaccine distribution structure to be age-based, leading to concerns that many essential workers would need to wait longer for their shots. Florida, another major agricultural producer, is now requiring vaccine recipients to show state driver’s licenses or proof of residence, potentially excluding the state’s 200,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers from being vaccinated at all.

“Farmworkers are among the most vulnerable populations, because they work in close proximity to each other [and] they go home, often to multigenerational households,” said Fresno County supervisor Brian Pacheco at a vaccination site on Wednesday. Fresno County became one of the first counties in the country to begin vaccinating farmworkers this week and plans to vaccinate more than 3,000 agricultural workers in the coming days at vaccination sites around the county.

“Vaccinating our essential farmworkers will ensure the safety of their workplaces, their homes, their families, our food supply, and the vital services that they perform,” Pacheco said.

One of the logistical questions facing employers and health departments is where, exactly, workers should get inoculated. Particularly for migrant farmworkers, who may relocate between shots, vaccine distribution must happen at easily accessible locations, says Leibman. MCN is aiding in that effort with a virtual case management program that can help workers figure out how to get a second vaccine dose if they move after their first shot.

“We need to make sure that the vaccine is available to workers rather than the workers being available to the vaccine,” she says.

For meatpacking workers, the best option is to get vaccinated at work, says Mark Lauritsen, vice president of meatpacking at the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Many large meatpacking plants have their own health clinics, where workers already receive medical care. Workers may be less nervous getting vaccinated in a familiar setting, he says.

“We’re going to work to make sure that it’s an efficient process and a safe process, and that there’s no barriers to accessing [the vaccine],” he says. “The power of having it right there at the plant means we get to these people with very few obstacles.”

Yet there’s also an essential role for public health departments, especially in cases where workers may not trust their employer or report to work on a regular schedule. Advocates who represent subcontracted workers in food processing recommended recently that local health departments be “heavily involved” in vaccine distribution to ensure that temporary workers are reached.

In some states, meatpacking and other agricultural workers can already receive the vaccine or will qualify imminently. Iowa’s meatpacking workers are expected to be able to set up vaccine appointments by Feb. 1, and in Kansas, they began to qualify for vaccine appointments on Jan. 26.

Meatpackers are still figuring out some of the details of how they will vaccinate workers. Nikki Richardson, director of communications for JBS, says vaccination logistics are still being determined at each plant, and that in some cases, public health departments, pharmacies, or local health clinics will carry out worker vaccinations. But the company is “prepared for our phase of vaccine allocation whenever it may occur,” Richardson says.

Tyson Foods plans to “offer vaccinations on-site at our facilities, at no cost, while our team members are on the job,” said the company’s public relations manager, Derek Burleson. Tyson has contracted with Matrix Medical Network to coordinate its worker testing and vaccination, so the timing of vaccinations will depend on when states make vaccines available to Matrix, Burleson says.

Meatpacker JBS says it will pay workers $100 to get vaccinated. A critic called the incentive program an “attempt to distract from the company’s failure to protect its workers.”

Smithfield did not respond to questions about the specifics of its vaccination program.

Employers are also still sorting out whether to incentivize or compensate workers for getting vaccinated. In the grocery sector, where at least 109 union workers have died of Covid-19 and more than 17,000 have contracted the virus, some retailers are introducing incentives to encourage workers to get the vaccine, though they’re not requiring it. For instance, Instacart will pay $25 to employees who take time off to the get vaccinated. Trader Joe’s will give its workers two hours of pay per vaccine dose.

So far, JBS is the only meatpacker that has said it will pay workers to get the vaccine—$100 for employees of the Brazilian-owned meatpacker and its subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride. But that approach isn’t uniformly popular.

Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, said in a statement that JBS’s incentive program is an “attempt to distract from the company’s failure to protect its workers.” Local 7 represents workers at a JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado, where six workers have died of Covid-19 and nearly 450 have been sickened by the virus. The company should quickly restore hazard pay for its workers and implement daily testing, among other precautions, Cordova said.

Meatpackers are also mixed on whether the vaccine should be mandatory for their workers. JBS is “currently focused on achieving the highest voluntary participation rate possible,” says Richardson. Tyson is “strongly encouraging team members to take the vaccine but are not mandating it,” says Burleson.

Lauritsen says the UFCW is opposed to making the vaccine mandatory and that receiving the vaccine should not be a condition of employment. Besides, he says, workers are ready to get the vaccine without it being made compulsory.

“Given the work that’s been done, the complete hell that these folks have went through during this pandemic,” he says, “our members are ready to get the vaccination, and the sooner the better.”

Leah Douglas  is an associate editor and staff writer at FERN. Prior to joining the team, she worked for three years as a reporter and policy analyst with the Open Markets Institute, where she researched economic consolidation and monopolization in the food and agriculture industry. She founded and wrote Food & Power, a first-of-its kind resource on food sector consolidation.

Nebraska health officials stop reporting COVID-19 confirmations at meatpacking plants as case counts continue to rise

Haven Orecchio-Egresitz BUSINESS INSIDER MAY 13, 2020

Workers leave the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Indiana, on May 7, 2020. Michael Conroy/AP Photo
Meatpacking plants around the US are hotspots for coronavirus cases.
As of early May in Nebraska alone, public health officials reported 96 at the Tyson plant in Madison, 237 at the JBS plant in Grand Island, and 123 arising from the Smithfield plant in Crete, The Washington Post reported.

As the cases climbed, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts announced the state would stop reporting infection numbers.

Hundreds of employees at Nebraska meatpacking plants have fallen ill — and some have died — from COVID-19, according to the Washington Post.

As of the first week of May, public health officials reported 96 infections at the Tyson plant in Madison, 237 at the JBS plant in Grand Island, and 123 arising from the Smithfield plant in Crete.

Then, as the numbers continued to rise, the state stopped releasing them.

Gov. Pete Ricketts announced at a news conference last week that state health officials would no longer share how many workers have been infected at each plant. The plants weren't releasing the numbers either, and employees and their families were left in the dark, The Post reported.

"What are you hiding?" Vy Mai, whose grandfather died of the novel coronavirus told The Post. "If the 'essential' workers are being treated fairly and protected at meatpacking plants, why aren't we allowed to know the numbers?"

Mai's grandfather was exposed to coronavirus by her aunt and uncle who were employed at a Smithfield plant in Crete, The Post reported.

Meatpacking plants have produced clusters of coronavirus outbreaks around the country. President Donald Trump has ordered the facilities to stay open to ensure the food supply isn't interrupted, but employees have told Business Insider that a lack of safeguards and a systemic work-while-sick culture puts their lives at risk.

When Ricketts stopped announcing the cases, has said he was doing so because the numbers can be unreliable, according to The Post.

He recommended that local health departments withhold the case counts unless they get permission from the plants.

The company officials declined to share numbers, citing privacy concerns and the fast-moving nature of the virus. They note that they are implementing worker protections at their plants, The Post said.

Shortly after The Post story was published, however, Tyson and Elkhorn Logan Valley health officials announced the results of testing at the company's plant in Madison, Nebraska.

Of the employees and contractors who work there, 212 tested positive for the coronavirus, The Post reported.

 

Something Is Rotten at Big Meat Inc.

The industry's sole priority is to funnel revenues into shareholders' pockets.

by

Jim Hightower

"A century ago, Sinclair condemned the 'unspeakable' practices that went on in 'packing houses all the time.' But today's conditions would leave him no less appalled," writes Hightower. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Upton Sinclair's landmark 1905 book, The Jungle, exposed the food contamination and worker exploitation hidden in the fetid stockyards and meatpacking plants of Chicago and other major American cities. The muckraking journalist dubbed the nasty and brutish meat factories "a monster...the Great Butcher...the spirit of capitalism made flesh."

The nauseating details of worker and consumer abuses that Sinclair exposed were so horrific that the ensuing public revulsion and outrage were transformative. Congress quickly passed a food purity law (the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act), and union organizing drives sparked nationwide contract bargaining that eventually gave long-oppressed meatpacking workers the clout to improve factory conditions and pay. Indeed, by 1970, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and the United Packinghouse Union had won enforceable safety rules and solid middle-class wages—about $25 an hour in today's dollars. Now the median wage for hourly workers in meatpacking plants is down to about half that—$13.23 per hour—some 30% less than production workers in other manufacturing jobs.

Around 1970, just when working families, consumers, environmentalists, and others were making real progress against corporate powers, the baronies of industry and high finance initiated a radical counteroffensive. One of their core efforts was a long-term propaganda campaign to legitimize unethical, anti-social corporate behavior. "Shareholder primacy," as they dubbed their malevolent principle, asserted that the corporate hierarchy's SOLE purpose and overarching moral duty is to maximize stockholder profits.

"When a corporation sets up a workplace that routinely results in maiming, mangling, sickening, disabling, and even killing workers, those outcomes are not 'accidents.' "

Under this self-serving theory, CEOs and board members must do everything legally possible to lower wages, shortcut safety, squeeze out competitors, cheapen quality, minimize environmental protections, dodge taxes, avoid scrutiny and safety, and otherwise manipulate the system to funnel revenues into shareholders' pockets.

When a corporation sets up a workplace that routinely results in maiming, mangling, sickening, disabling, and even killing workers, those outcomes are not "accidents." They are intentional, immoral decisions by executives and investors to increase profits by treating the human beings who produce the corporate product as disposable. 

To cover up this wholly unethical, cost-of-doing-business approach, meatpacking profiteers put out a stream of B.S. to extol their industry's commitment to the well-being of its beloved family of employees.

Shareholder primacy is, of course, pure hokum, a mumbo-jumbo mandate for greed with no basis in law, economics or ethics. Yet, over the past 50 years, the shareholders-made-me-do-it dictum has ruled nearly every industry, none more than meatpacking. By 1980, the largest meatpackers were buying up smaller competitors, relocating plants from unionized urban areas to anti-union rural counties, dehumanizing and de-skilling workplaces, slashing wages, setting injury-causing work processes and imposing strict labor rules that leave workers with little power to complain about, much less to stop, abuses.

A century ago, Sinclair condemned the "unspeakable" practices that went on in "packing houses all the time." But today's conditions would leave him no less appalled. While unions and other reformers have set higher standards for cleanliness and safety, there's a big difference between what's put on paper and what actually occurs. Progress in standards, it turns out, has been efficiently canceled out by the sheer enormity of today's facilities; the massive volume of animals slaughtered and butchered day and night; and the treacherous work speeds corporate bosses demand.

The Big Three multinational giants dominating the U.S. meat market (Brazil's JBS, Arkansas' Tyson Foods and the Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods) run factories typically covering hundreds of acres. There, 1,000 or more low-paid workers stand elbow to elbow in "The Chain"—high-speed "disassembly" lines that snake through the factories. Slogging through 10- to 12-hour shifts, they wield assorted saws, knives, hammers, cleavers and other sharp and heavy tools for animal dissection made slippery by gore as they kill, gut, pluck, skin, cut, split, strip, bleed, debone and package thousands of animals every single day. Periodically, industry lobbyists get government OKs to squeeze in more workers and speed up The Chain to force more "product throughput"...and profit.

Inevitably and constantly, stuff happens to the workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration official injury reports show an average of 17 severe injuries a month including two amputations a week. The extent of the bloody toll, however, remains hidden since corporations are allowed to largely self-report injuries. Local, state and federal regulators' standard practice is to treat industry executives and investors as esteemed clients to be coddled, not as safety violators to be sanctioned. So, The Chain keeps running and nothing changes—except maybe the appearance of another "safety first" poster in the break room.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow. Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Trump’s Health Secretary Says Workers’ Home Lives, Not Working Conditions, Are Responsible For Coronavirus Outbreaks In Meatpacking Plants

Alex Azar’s comments echo those from the meatpacking industry, who say outbreaks in their plants are not their fault.

May 8, 2020

WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar blamed a rash of COVID-19 cases in meatpacking plants on workers’ personal living habits, suggesting they were contracting the disease in their communities and bringing the disease to the plant.

During a call with congressional lawmakers, the top health official expressed the need to keep plants open amid the coronavirus. His comments were first reported by Politico.

The call was about rural hospitals but veered into the Trump administration’s oversight of workplaces deemed essential. “Azar attempted to make the case that meat processing plants should be kept open and that workers are at greater risk of COVID-19 infection in their ‘home and social’ environments rather than on the job,” said Democratic Rep. Ann Kuster.

Kuster said the administration’s approach to handling COVID-19 outbreaks in essential workplaces “deeply troubling.”

Azar’s comments align with the stance of the meatpacking industry. As meat processing plants have become coronavirus hot spots, the industry has assigned blame to the living conditions of workers, not failures in workplace safety.

When the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in South Dakota became one of the largest known coronavirus clusters in the country, with over 700 people infected, the company blamed “living circumstances in certain cultures are different than they are with your traditional American family.”

The company said many of the infected workers lived in the same building and apartment. Conversations with workers revealed Smithfield did little to inform or protect employees in the period immediately after the first case of infection was discovered.


Meatpacking industry workers are disproportionately people of color, immigrants, and people in low-income families. More than 44% of the industry is Hispanic and 25% is black, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“President Trump and his Administration are giving more value to a piece of meat than the lives of American workers and their children,” Rep. Tony Cardenás, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' fundraising arm, told BuzzFeed News in a statement on Friday. “Once again President Trump is ignoring science and the truth. He wants to give immunity to large food corporations and require hard-working people, some U.S. citizens, and some undocumented, to risk their lives. This is wrong, this is criminal.”

The issue, given its intersection of rights for workers and for people of color in the middle of a public health crisis, will factor into this year’s presidential campaign. Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee to face Trump in the general election, focused on the meatpackers Monday during a forum with the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

“It’s always been dangerous,” Biden said of the work. “It’s always been underpaid. And now add that to the extreme threat of COVID-19 made all the worse by fear that workers are living with every single day. They’re afraid to go to work, because what happens if they get ill, what happens if they get COVID-19? They’re afraid to stay home because of what it means for their livelihood. … They’re afraid to come home after work, because of what they might be bringing back and spread to people they love and adore. They’re afraid to seek proper medical care, because what if it meant that their immigration status is in jeopardy and be changed?”

On Friday, a Biden campaign spokesperson characterized Azar’s comments to lawmakers as an extension of an inadequate Trump administration response to the coronavirus crisis.

"Secretary Azar's comments are part and parcel of Trump and his administration's refusal to take responsibility for their abject failure on the coronavirus — a failure that has left over 75,000 Americans dead, with over a million more infected, and 33 million workers newly jobless,” the spokesperson, Mike Gwin, said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “Essential workers, like those in meat processing plants — along with health care workers and first responders — desperately need life-saving personal protective equipment, not more excuses from Trump about why he hasn't gotten them the supplies they need to battle this virus.”

Over 10,000 positive coronavirus tests have been linked to at least 170 meat processing plants across the country.

Azar’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE
May 8, 2020, at 11:41 a.m.
This post has been updated with comment from Rep. Tony Cardenás, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' fundraising arm.

UPDATE
May 8, 2020, at 12:24 p.m.
This post has been updated with comment from a Biden campaign spokesperson.


MORE ON THIS
Smithfield Foods Is Blaming “Living Circumstances In Certain Cultures” For One Of America’s Largest COVID-19 Clusters 

Albert Samaha · April 20, 2020

Costco Is Thriving During The Coronavirus Pandemic. Its Workers Say They’ve Paid The Price.

Brianna Sacks · April 16, 2020




Kadia Goba is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Paul McLeod is a politics reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Henry Gomez is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Covid-19: How the meat industry became a global health liability

Issued on: 24/05/2020

Butchers work in the Hasenheide slaughterhouse in Fuerstenfeldbruck, Germany, January 28, 2019. © Michaela Rehle, Reuters
Text by:Colin KINNIBURGH
From South Dakota to Brazil to Germany, meat processing workers around the world have been among the hardest hit by Covid-19. Will the pandemic force us to rethink our food system?

It started in South Dakota. On March 25, even as some of the biggest US cities were just going into lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, a worker at a pork processing plant in the city of Sioux Falls (pop. 181,000) tested positive for the virus. Some at the plant suspected it wasn’t the first case.

Smithfield, the company operating the facility and largest pork producer in the world, quickly confirmed the March 25 case but said it would continue operations as usual. Three weeks later, the Sioux Falls plant had become the United States’ largest Covid-19 hotspot, with 644 of its 3,700 employees infected. More than half of all the cases in South Dakota could be traced back to the plant.

But it didn’t stop there. From Mississippi to Washington, Texas to Nebraska, one state after another reported outbreaks in beef, pork and poultry plants. Most had lockdown orders in place; a few, like South Dakota, did not, but it made little difference for meatpacking workers, who were considered “essential” and therefore still expected to show up for work.

As of May 22, according to the Food & Environment Reporting Network, more than 17,000 US meatpacking workers at 220 facilities have caught the virus, and 66 have died.

Many of these workers also brought the virus home to their families and communities, fuelling the spread of Covid-19. According to unions and employees themselves, they were given little choice. With wages averaging around $15 an hour at facilities like the Sioux Falls Smithfield plant, many workers live pay check to pay check, and would not be eligible for unemployment benefits if they quit.

Moreover, Smithfield workers say they were given incentives to keep working even if they were sick, including a $500 “responsibility bonus” promised to those who finished all of their shifts in April. (The company says all of its hourly workers were eligible for the bonus, including those “who miss[ed] work due to Covid-19 exposure or diagnosis”.)

Workers also say they were provided with insufficient protective equipment, despite union representatives raising concerns about Covid-19 contamination as early as the beginning of March, according to the BBC.

The risks faced by these workers highlight the profound inequalities cutting across the Covid-19 crisis not just in the United States, but worldwide. From Iowa to India, low-wage, often migrant workers have borne the brunt of both the deadly virus and the economic toll of lockdowns.

Meat processing plants illustrate this trend in particularly stark terms. Over the last month, the kinds of Covid-19 clusters first seen at facilities in the US Midwest and South have cropped up in Brazil, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.

At a single Cargill beef processing plant in the Canadian province of Alberta, 949 of about 2,000 employees were infected with the virus and two died. In Canada as in the United States, meatpacking plants are staffed primarily by immigrants and in many cases refugees. Many have fled wars and other threats in countries ranging from Ethiopia to El Salvador to Vietnam, and some speak little English.

In Germany and France, slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants were among the first Covid-19 clusters to emerge as lockdown measures began to ease in early May. Germany’s meat industry, too, is heavily dependent on migrant labour: according to unions, about 80% of employees are temporary workers, mostly from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and other countries in Eastern and Southern Europe.

Workers ‘as expendable as the things they’re slaughtering’

Why, then, has the meat industry been so hard hit by Covid-19?

“The one-word answer is monopoly,” says Raj Patel, a research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and expert on the global food system. “Across the world, the meat industry has been tending towards just a few large players.”

Patel points to a 2016 report by the United States Department of Agriculture showing that the four largest meatpacking companies “account for nearly 70 percent of the value of all US livestock purchased for slaughter, compared to just 26 percent in 1980".

In other major meat-producing countries, too, the industry is highly concentrated: for example, a 2011 study by the European Federation of Trade Unions in the Food, Agriculture and Tourism found that in France, Germany and the UK, the top five beef and poultry producers accounted for a large majority of their respective markets.

Patel says the Covid-19 outbreaks seen in so many meat processing plants are an “object lesson” in what happens when industries consolidate, “which is that in order to survive, everyone else has had to follow the kinds of practices that the largest players have adopted”.

“Those practices in the meat industry are around people and machines being very close to one another,” he continues. “So the carcasses fly through the line very quickly.”

The faster animal carcasses move along the production line, the closer together workers need to be, putting them at high risk of infection from airborne virus particles. Some experts have suggested that the cold, humid, enclosed conditions in meat facilities could also be a factor, though this remains unconfirmed.

Patel says that, while worker safety protocols and “line speeds” may vary from country to country, the standards set by the largest companies are increasingly becoming the global norm.

Furthermore, he says, working conditions in the meat industry can be substandard even in countries like France and Germany, where workers in other industries benefit from above-average labour rights.

“Actually, German poultry line speeds are much faster than in the United States,” he says. Moreover, the German meat industry relies heavily on subcontracting, with third-party companies responsible for hiring foreign workers on temporary contracts and in some cases lodging them in cramped dorms. Critics say these practices allowed the heavily immigrant workforce to be exploited, while shielding larger companies from accountability.

In such environments, Patel says, “workers are considered as expendable as the things that they’re slaughtering” — even in countries like Germany, which have otherwise largely kept Covid-19 in check.

“It is in the sites where expendable life is to be found that you see the worst effects of industrial monopoly concentration in the meat industry,” Patel adds.

Calls for a more sustainable food system

As the Covid-19 pandemic has put the meat industry in the international spotlight, some have proposed a simple solution: eat less meat. Patel agrees that a drastic reduction in meat consumption is key to “any sustainable future” for the food system, both for workers and the environment, but says calls to simply go vegetarian or vegan are only a “partial answer” to the problems the pandemic has highlighted.

He emphasises the need to listen to demands from food workers themselves when charting the transition to a more sustainable food system.

In some cases, that might in fact mean boycotting meat. In the US, a coalition led by Latino workers in Iowa — one of the states where the meat industry has been hardest hit by Covid-19 — issued a call for a nationwide “Meatless May” to protest against “unforgivable” conditions in meatpacking facilities.

Another US labour advocacy group, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, has issued a list of five steps that citizens can take to support at-risk workers, including putting pressure on both corporations and elected officials to guarantee sick pay, health care, the right to organize and other protections.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a more modest list of recommendations: screen workers for symptoms; increase space between workers (notably by reducing the “rate of animal processing”); enhance cleaning and disinfection; and provide multilingual education and training.

Under popular pressure following the recent outbreaks, the German government has gone further, announcing reforms to the industry including €30,000 fines for health and safety violations and a ban on subcontracting, effective in January 2021.

In France, the Confédération Paysanne farmers’ union has called for a return to smaller-scale, local meat production. In a statement this week, the group said: “The re-localisation of (meat) processing is one of the necessary steps towards a more resilient system.”

The European Commission has echoed some of these proposals in its Farm to Fork Strategy, also published this week as part of its roadmap for the continent-wide Green Deal announced in January. The Commission says it plans to promote “shorter supply chains” in order “to enhance resilience of regional and local food systems”.


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The Farm to Fork Strategy also calls explicitly for reducing consumption of meat: “Moving to a more plant-based diet with less red and processed meat and with more fruits and vegetables will reduce not only risks of life-threatening diseases, but also the environmental impact of the food system.”

Patel says that these are all important steps, but stresses that there are no easy fixes, and that improving conditions in the food industry will also ultimately mean paying more for food.

“Small-scale farming is part of it, but so is well-paid migrant labour, and so are dignified wages for everyone,” so that food produced under fair conditions is affordable to all, he says. He says workers in the meat industry deserve a “just transition” to a more sustainable system, as has been proposed for those working in fossil fuels.

Patel adds that this is a rare opportunity to begin that transition.

“This is a moment to pivot,” he says. “If ever you wanted a time where sustainable food systems were imaginable, where you had the labour force ready to engage in sustained transformation… now is the moment to do it.”

As leaders warned of US meat shortages, overseas exports of pork and beef continued

THIS WOULD APPLY IN ALBERTA TOO 

Kyle Bagenstose, USA TODAY•June 16, 2020


As U.S. meat production plummeted in April following a rash of coronavirus outbreaks and closures at processing plants across the country, industry and political leaders sounded an alarm.

Factory closures were “pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,” Kenneth Sullivan, CEO of Smithfield Foods, the country’s largest pork producer, warned in a public message April 6.

As closures worsened three weeks later, John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, put his name on a full page ad in The Washington Post and The New York Times warning that America’s “food supply chain is breaking.”

“Our plants must remain operational so that we can supply food to our families in America,” Tyson said.

The next day, President Donald Trump threw the industry a lifeline. He invoked the Defense Production Act to declare it was crucial to keep meat plants open and operating. He had used the authority just once before: to ramp up production of personal protective equipment. The move elevated American meat processing into a privileged position.

“It is important that processors of beef, pork, and poultry in the food supply chain continue operating and fulfilling orders to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans,” Trump wrote in his executive order.

But Americans were never at risk of a severe meat shortage, a USA TODAY investigation found, based on an analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture data and interviews with meat industry analysts.

Instead, some critics say, the fear was used to justify the executive order, which provided some liability protection for meatpacking plants. It also created a uniform system of rules, set by the federal government, to keep plants open rather than leave the closure of meatpacking plants to a patchwork of state and local health authorities.

Amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19, a worker restocks chicken in the meat product section at a grocery store in Dallas, Wednesday, April 29, 2020.

“We’ve been very skeptical about these claims around shortages,” said Ben Lilliston, a co-executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which advocates for fair and sustainable food systems. “I think they were able to use the idea of food shortages as leverage to get those two things.”

Federal data reviewed by USA TODAY show that although American beef and pork production did tank in a six-week period stretching from mid-March to the executive order, exports of hundreds of millions of pounds of meat continued. The amount of beef and pork products exported over that time period actually exceeded the amount of lost production when compared with 2019 levels.

Lilliston pointed out the industry also never drew down meat supplies sitting in “cold storage” warehouses in the middle of the supply chain, which he said would have indicated faltering supply.

In fact, red meat and poultry products in cold storage grew by about 40 million pounds from March to April, reaching 2.5 billion pounds, USDA data show.

“Cold storage can tell you something. … If the levels are still pretty high there, that tells you they haven’t tapped into that,” Lilliston said.

Other experts also made a distinction between the “spot shortages” of meat – temporary shortages of some products in some places – that spiked in early May and a truly critical lack of protein-rich products.

“We’re not going to run out of meat,” Steve Meyer, an economist for Kerns & Associates, an agricultural commodities firm in Iowa, told USA TODAY in late April. “Buy what you need, and leave some for somebody else, and I think we’ll all get through this OK.”

Others say it’s more complicated. Economists warn that a sharp curtailment of exports to shore up domestic supplies could harm long-term trade relationships and possibly backfire as companies lose a profit motive to slaughter more animals. And Sarah Little, a spokeperson for the industry group North American Meat Institute, said efforts to stabilize the industry were to ensure that a serious shortage never arrived.

“While there was less variety to consumers, or certain regional areas may have experienced shortages of meat, it wasn’t a widespread shortage,” Little said. “It never got to a point where we thought Americans would not have access to food. That is never something our companies would want to see. And that’s why it was so important to be able to continue operations.”

But Tony Corbo, a senior government affairs representative of the nonprofit Food & Water Watch, said he saw a disconnect between the alarming language the industry used in April and the continued exports.

“There’s this incongruity between the Tysons of the world and the Smithfields of the world wringing their hands, saying this is going to cause all kinds of disruptions to the domestic meat supply, while at the same time behind everybody’s back they’re exporting,” Corbo said.
Production drops as exports rise

In the crucial month leading up to Trump’s executive order, USDA data show beef and pork production was in sharp decline. From March 20 to April 24, the industry produced 171 million fewer pounds of beef and pork than during the same stretch last year.

But the industry exported about 636 million pounds over the same time span, nearly four times the deficit. That number has since grown to more than 1.3 billion pounds exported through early June.

And while the U.S. does export significant quantities of “variety meat” products such as feet and tails that most Americans don’t eat, data from the U.S. Meat Export Federation shows those products accounted for less than 25% of the weight of exports in April.

Joe Schuele, vice president of communications for the federation, said that even among non-variety meats, some pork and beef products are more popular overseas. That includes exports of beef short plate, a tough and fatty meat, to Japan, and pork picnic, a shoulder cut popular in Mexico.

Federal export figures do not detail which cuts are being exported.

Data does show that the overall trends of meat production and export began to diverge by early April and grew further apart leading up to Trump’s executive order. During those several weeks, production of beef and pork dipped below 2019 levels, but exports soared above the amounts seen a year earlier. In the week ending April 23, the industry exported 98.6 million pounds of pork overseas, the second-highest total of 2020.

Lilliston said the continued push to export wasn’t surprising. The nation’s largest meat companies, which also include JBS and Cargill, are now global operations, with products flowing to wherever the most value is to be had, he said.

“It's not their mission to feed U.S. citizens,” Lilliston said. “They view the U.S. as a really important market, perhaps their most important market. But it's not 'Our job is to fill their grocery stores so people have enough to eat.’”

Hli Yang, a Tyson spokesperson, said the criticism was unfair.

“We export responsibly and assess market dynamics, such as COVID-19’s impact in the U.S., before making decisions,” Yang said.

Yang added that the company had been “prioritizing” beef and pork sales in the U.S. market.

“We also voluntarily curtailed beef and pork exports that fit the tastes of domestic consumers to try to meet U.S. demand during this challenging time,” Yang said.

Keira Lombardo, executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance for Smithfield, said there’s a delay between production and export that meant food exported at the height of the pandemic was “ordered and processed” months before.

“More recently, U.S. exports have declined as a result of lower production amid COVID-19,” Lombardo said.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s executive order for this story, referring the matter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA did not respond to requests for comment.

Exports’ explosive growth

Agricultural economists say that improving domestic supply by limiting exports may not be as simple as it seems.

Over the past several decades, America’s meat industry has increasingly relied on exports for growth and profits. The U.S. now exports more meat than ever before, growing from less than 2% of production in 1960 to about 23% of pork, 16% of chicken, and 11% of beef in 2019, USDA data show.

“Most of the demand for meat has not been inside the United States,” said Jayson Lusk, head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. “It’s been outside the country, so it’s not surprising U.S. producers looking to grow their markets have looked elsewhere to try to find additional customers.”

Buoyed most recently by the Trump administration’s reworking of trade agreements with China and Mexico, 2020 was expected to be a banner year for exports, particularly pork. Farmers had expanded their herds in anticipation, leaving a glut once COVID-19 struck, which required some farmers to do traumatic mass cullings and placed additional pressure on plants to reopen.

Experts also say exportation has become deeply ingrained in the supply chain, down to the farm level. Some animals are primarily raised to send specific cuts overseas, with the remainder of the animal heading to U.S. supplies.

Lombardo, the Smithfied representative, said meat processing facilities are typically equipped to produce specific products, whether for retail, restaurants or exports. Converting them for another use takes time.

“Food supply chains are complex and products for one market cannot always be immediately reconfigured for another,” Lombardo said.

Without an export incentive, domestic supply could also dip, others said.

“I think those considering restricting exports overestimate the extent it would increase domestic consumption and underestimate the adverse economic impact,” said Glynn Tonsor, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.

Some remain skeptical that curtailing exports would hurt domestic supply. Roger Horowitz, a history professor and meat industry expert at the University of Delaware, said he believes companies would find a way to make use of all animals parts domestically or transfer costs to consumers, although perhaps for less money.

“Export restrictions could hurt profits, but not American consumers,” Horowitz said.

But Lusk added that any short-term domestic gains realized by curtailing exports could also result in long-term damage to trade relations.

“The issue is that there are real people and real relationships on the other end of those trade deals,” Lusk said. “If one cancels a contract today, do they lose that customer next month? What does that do to the profitability of the packing plant and the pork producers?”
The risks to workers

At the mercy of the economic equation are the nation’s meatpacking workers, who risk contracting COVID-19 in the workplace. While the Trump administration and industry leaders say conditions have improved for employees after workplace safety guidelines were implemented last month, workers continue to fall ill.

By tracking public reports, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that 10,000 meatpacking workers had fallen ill by May 5, with at least 45 deaths. Those numbers have since grown to more than 24,000 infections and at least 90 deaths.

For one plant inspector within the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), it didn’t sit well that administration officials raised the specter of meat shortages while exports continued. The FSIS employs several thousand inspectors who visit meatpacking plants daily; at least four have died from COVID-19.

According to the inspector, who spoke with USA TODAY under condition of anonymity, FSIS officials initially addressed inspectors in April and said there was an urgent need to remain on the job, despite the risks of COVID-19.

Tyson Foods installed plastic barriers between worker stations at its meat and poultry plants to protect against transmission of the coronavirus.

“Because the meat supply to all Americans, including the inspectors’ families, kids, and grandkids could fail, leading to widespread meat shortages and malnutrition,” the employee recalled officials saying.

Agency officials later changed the tone of communications and are now simply thanking inspectors for doing their job, instead of citing concerns about food shortages, which the USDA inspector said was appreciated.

But USDA leadership is still using the argument publicly. In a June 9 statement announcing that meat production had returned to 95% of 2019 levels, USDA secretary Sonny Perdue again justified the push to keep meatpacking plants open by citing risks to the domestic food supply.

“I want to thank the patriotic and heroic meatpacking facility workers, the companies, and the local authorities for quickly getting their operations back up and running, and for providing a great meat selection once again to the millions of Americans who depend on them for food,” Perdue said.

Debbie Berkowitz, who spent six years as chief of staff and senior policy adviser at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and is now director of the National Employment Law Project’s worker health and safety program, criticized the administration, saying worker safety has been jeopardized on a false premise.

“They just decided those lives were OK to sacrifice … and for what?” Berkowitz said. So many of (the) plants sent their pork to China. It wasn’t about feeding America.”

Lilliston said the tension between worker safety, domestic supply and export highlights a potential weakness of the modern-day U.S. meat industry. He advocates a reevaluation of how much power rests in the hands of just a few meatpacking companies whose primary mission is to grow exports.

“They’re not ready to give it up. Even when there are problems here domestically,” Lilliston said. “It really shows the power I think in some ways, of that sort of export-above-all mentality.”

No export restrictions, but May dip anyway

Although it was within his power to curtail exports under COVID-19, Trump declined to do so under the April 28 executive order. That broke from an earlier order on personal protective equipment, which invoked the Defense Production Act while telling manufacturers such as 3M that “it is the policy of the United States to prevent domestic brokers, distributors, and other intermediaries from diverting (PPE) material overseas.”

On May 1, CNBC cited current and former Trump administration officials in reporting that Trump was asked about the prospect of restricting meat exports on a private call with meat industry CEOs.

Trump responded that “he was not interested in restricting exports at this time,” CNBC reported.

The White House declined to comment to USA TODAY.

While U.S. meat production rallied, exports destabilized through May.

The amount of pork sent overseas crashed in the week after Trump’s executive order, dropping below 2019 levels. It has since moved back into year-over-year growth, but beef and pork exports have been on a downward trajectory since the executive order.

As meat production now nears 2019 levels, signaling a return toward some semblance of normalcy, the White House did not say if Trump has made any determination under what circumstances he would rescind the order.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Meat shortages were unlikely despite warnings from Trump, meatpackers