Meatpackers ignored COVID-19 spread to keep operating, House report says

The nation’s biggest meatpackers ignored warnings that COVID-19 was spreading through their plants, hyped claims of impending shortages and helped draft a Trump administration order to keep the facilities running during the early days of the pandemic, a congressional investigation found.

A report released Thursday by a House panel examining the nation’s pandemic response portrayed a coordinated campaign by major meatpacking companies and their Washington lobbyists to enlist senior officials of then-President Donald Trump’s administration in an effort to circumvent state and local health departments’ attempts to control the spread of the virus in meatpacking facilities.

Democratic Representative James Clyburn, who chairs the panel, said “shameful conduct” of meatpacking executives “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.”

Julie Anna Potts, president of the main meatpackers’ trade group, the North American Meat Institute, called the report “completely unrepresentative” and said it “ignores the rigorous and comprehensive measures companies enacted to protect employees.”

Meatpacking plants were an early epicenter of the virus and seeded coronavirus in surrounding communities, with subsequent studies showing counties with large meatpacking facilities experiencing dramatically higher caseloads in the early phases of the pandemic than similar areas without such plants.