WASHINGTON — The country’s largest meat processors successfully lobbied the Trump administration in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic to keep processing plants open despite the health risks to their workers, according to a congressional report released Thursday.
The report, prepared by a select House committee, details the extent of the meat industry’s influence on the administration’s response to the pandemic: companies fueled “unfounded” fears of an impending meat shortage in a bid to avoid factory closures. The Tyson Foods legal department has prepared the first draft of an executive order issued by President Donald J. Trump in April 2020 identifying processing plants as “critical infrastructure.” And industry concerns prompted the government to change its federal recommendations about worker safety at a meat processing plant.
Representative James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and committee chair, said the findings underscored the companies’ importance in prioritizing manufacturing over the health of their workers.
“The shameful behavior of business leaders who seek profit at all costs during a crisis and government officials who want to do their best regardless of the resulting harm to the public should never be repeated,” he said in a statement.
About 59,000 workers in meat processing plants contracted the virus from March 1, 2020 to February 1, 2021, and 269 eventually died, the commission said in October.
Meat processors and trade groups withdrew the findings.
The report “distorts the truth” and “distorts the rigorous and comprehensive measures companies have taken to protect employees and support their critical infrastructure workers,” according to the North American Meat Institute.
The report is based on 151,000 pages of documents; more than a dozen calls to meat processors, union representatives and former government officials; and personnel briefings with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Agriculture.
Slaughterhouses, where people work nearby, became major hot spots in the early weeks of the pandemic. Due to factory closures, executives at Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods issued public warnings in April 2020 that the country was at risk of running out of meat.
But data shows that a record amount of pork was exported to China that month. In emails obtained by the House committee, Smithfield’s CEO noted that there was “enough meat” for export, and a representative from the North American Meat Institute described the warnings as “deliberately scaring people.”
The report also details how industry representatives engaged top Trump administration officials to dissuade workers from staying at home and soften federal guidelines to deal with coronavirus outbreaks in meat processing plants.
For example, in an April appeal, meat company CEOs asked then-Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue for the president or vice president to make it clear to workers that “being afraid of Covid-19 is not a reason to quit your job and you is not eligible for unemployment benefits if you do.”
At a White House press conference four days later, Vice President Mike Pence urged food workers to “show up and do your job” and assured them that the administration was “working with all of your businesses to make sure that your workplace is safe.”
The report also described Mindy M. Brashears, the former secretary of state for food safety at the Department of Agriculture, as the meatpacking industry’s “go-to fixer.” According to the report, Ms. Brashears sometimes used her personal phone number and email address to contact industry representatives – a possible violation of record-keeping rules.
Neither Mr Perdue nor Ms Brashears immediately responded to requests for comment.
The House committee also obtained documents showing Smithfield executives hired top Department of Agriculture officials to propose changes to federal health recommendations for one of its facilities in South Dakota in April 2020.
Compared to an original version obtained by The Washington Post, the final guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include qualifiers as “if feasible” and “if possible.”
dr. Robert R. Redfield, the former CDC director, told the committee that he added the qualifications “because he was convinced by industry concerns” relayed by Mr Perdue and his understanding of an impending meat shortage.
Jim Monroe, Smithfield’s vice president for corporate affairs, said in a statement that the “concerns we expressed were very real.”
“Have we made every effort to share with government officials our perspective on the pandemic and how it affected the food production system? Absolutely,” said Mr. Monroe.
When states and local governments began enacting their own lockdowns, the meat processing industry sought a solution by proposing a federal directive invoking the Defense Production Act. Smithfield and Tyson held talks with both Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Pence’s chiefs of staff, and Mr. Trump’s executive order “approved the themes and legal guidance set forth in Tyson’s draft,” the report said.
The executive order did not require meat processing plants to remain open, but reduced legal liability for the companies if they followed the coronavirus guidelines.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Tyson, Gary Mickelson, said the company “has been approached by, received directions from, and worked with many different federal, state and local officials — including both the Trump and Biden administrations — while we have navigated the challenges of the pandemic.”