COVID-19 infection rates soared as high as 54 per cent of the workforce at some U.S. meat plants
The report by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis cites interviews with staff members of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration saying that leaders of the agency made “a political decision” in 2020 during the Trump administration not to issue a regulatory standard that would have required meatpacking companies to take specific steps to protect workers.Article content
The committee staff cited examples of individual plants where infection rates soared as high as 54 per cent of the workforce at JBS SA’s facility in Hyrum, Utah, and 50 per cent at Tyson Foods Inc.’s plant in Amarillo, Texas. At the Amarillo plant, employees as late as May 2, 2020, were working in masks “saturated” with sweat and other fluids and separated only by flimsy “plastic bags on frames” rather than barriers, according to memo from local and federal authorities to Tyson obtained by the subcommittee.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report issued in September pointed to the closer working conditions in meatpacking plants than other U.S. manufacturing facilities as a likely reason the industry became an early epicenter of the pandemic. The 49 rural U.S. counties most dependent on meatpacking plants for employment had COVID-19 infection rates 10 times the level of other manufacturing-dependent rural counties in May 2020, the USDA found.
The subcommittee’s coronavirus findings were based on internal documents from JBS, Tyson, Smithfield Foods Inc., Cargill Inc., and National Beef Inc.
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