Executives defend conditions after death, virus cases

Facing pressure from Weld County health officials and the death of an employee who was infected with the novel coronavirus, JBS USA executives said this week they’re confident the meat packing plant in Greeley is safe and that appropriate precautions have been taken to protect workers from infection.

Saul Sanchez, 78, a 30year plant employee, died Tuesday after he was hospitalized with COVID-19 on March 24, his daughter, Beatriz Rangel, said. At least 15 plant workers have been infected with the novel coronavirus, JBS USA CEO Andre Nogueira said in an interview with The Denver Post on Tuesday.

The actual numbers of infected people could be higher, health officials said. The Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment is investigating the situation at the plant, looking at how and where employees became infected and who the infected employees might have exposed, as well as the conditions inside the plant, spokesman Eric Aakko said Wednesday.

Mark Wallace, director of the county health department, could shut down the plant if necessary, Aakko said.

“But he’s trying, and the plant is trying, to reach a mutual point of agreement where the employees are safe, the public is safe and really that is what it is all about,” Aakko said.

About 3,400 people work at the meat packing plant, which is considered an essential business under Colorado’s stay-at-home order because it is part of the food supply chain. A variety of measures have been taken at the plant to protect workers, said Tim Schellpeper, president of JBS’s Fed Beef division. He said the plant has increased cleaning crews and sanitation, screened workers for elevated temperatures, put up dividers on cafeteria tables so workers are separated into individual eating stations, provided some employees with face masks or shields, and encouraged social distancing by staggering breaks and increasing the space available for breaks, among other precautions.

But any such measures failed to protect Sanchez, who came home from work sick on March 19, Rangel said. Despite feeling poorly, he went back to work on March 20 — as he had most days for 30 years, leaving his Greeley home around 4 a.m. in order to get a good parking spot at the plant before his 6:30 a.m. shift.

After that Friday shift, he had the weekend off and then was scheduled to go on vacation on March 23, Rangel said. But that never happened; he was too sick. On March 24, he was hospitalized; he tested positive for COVID-19. He called Rangel from his hospital bed and asked her to be sure to tell JBS he’d be back at work the next Monday, when his vacation was scheduled to end.

“I was like, ‘Dad, that’s the least of my concerns,’ ” Rangel said. Still, she called JBS that week and was transferred around until someone eventually took a message. No one ever followed up, she said.

On March 20, JBS implemented a policy that “removed high-risk populations” from its facilities and the company encouraged Sanchez to stay home because of his age, JBS said in a statement. The company said Sanchez did not go to work while he was showing symptoms, something Rangel disputes.

“They wouldn’t know because they haven’t reached out to us at all,” she said.

Two family members who are medical professionals were able to be with Sanchez when he was taken off a ventilator and died Tuesday night, Rangel said.

“It’s been very, very hard,” she said. “He was the heart of the family.”

Sanchez proudly wore a jacket that JBS gave him for working 30 years, she said. He was compassionate, kind and humble. He played cards and liked to talk politics, or sports, or education.

All but one of 65 JBS USA facilities in the country remain open, Nogueira said Tuesday. The company shut down a processing plant in Souderton, Pa., for two weeks after several members of the management team got sick with flulike symptoms that could have been COVID-19, Nogueira said.

“We do not want to run the plant if it is not safe for the team members,” he said. But he does not expect to do the same in Greeley, unless the number of cases dramatically rises.

More than 800 workers called off and stayed home one day last week, as coronavirus cases were confirmed among employees. Noguiera said that absenteeism has improved since then but neither he nor company representatives would provide numbers.

“We are still able to produce the production of the plant, at a slower pace than we would like to be, but the pace that will keep everyone at work and producing the food,” Nogueira said of the absent workers.

“We fight a common enemy,” he said. “There are 500 cases in Weld County. At this time in the plant, everyone knows someone, in the school, in the church, who got sick. It’s a fear. And I completely understand the concern. Our job is to make sure that inside of the plant they are safe; that the plant is not a source of the spread.”

Rangel is certain her father was infected at the plant — he rarely went anywhere aside from work and hadn’t traveled since October, she said. “He came straight from work to home. He’d take a shower, and eat dinner and go to sleep,” she said. “That is what he did every day. Until, you know … now he is gone.”