Meatpacking Industry Was Indifferent to Worker Safety Amid COVID, Report Shows

“The meatpacking industry’s efforts — aided extensively by Trump’s USDA and White House officials — led to policies, guidance, and an executive order that, individually and altogether, forced meatpacking workers to continue working despite health risks and allowed companies to avoid taking precautions to protect workers from the coronavirus,” the subcommittee concluded.

“This collaboration is crucial to ensuring the essential work of the U.S. food supply chain and our continued efforts to keep team members safe,” Tyson spokesperson Gary Mickelson said, noting that the Biden administration supported the company’s effort last year to have one of the first fully vaccinated workforces in the U.S. Mickelson did not address the lawsuit allegations.

The industry was fortunate to have the USDA as its “primary regulator,” Potts wrote in an email to colleagues. “Officials at USDA are moving more quickly than other agencies and representing our industry’s interests in every important interagency decision,” sheWithin weeks, Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, set up a call between the CEOs of Tyson, Smithfield and other meatpackers and Vice President Mike Pence.

“It really muddies the guidance when we start putting these waffle words into it,” Dr. Henry Walke, then-director of CDC’s Division of Preparedness and Emerging Infections told the subcommittee, according to excerpts from anSullivan and others in the industry meanwhile misled the public about an impending meat shortage that they said would result if plants closed temporarily, the subcommittee said.

But at almost the exact same moment, Tyson’s CEO was emailing the head of Smithfield about his idea for an executive order.a draft order that would invoke the president’s powers under a Korean War-era law called the Defense Production Act. And meatpacking executives agreed they should send it to the White House.

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