Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Migrant and Incarcerated Inmates (Who Also Faced Transmission in Prison) Were COVID Canaries in the Coal Mine at Meatpacking and Poultry Slaughterhouse Plants
Do we prefer not to see the COVID risk meatpackers were put in so we could eat our steaks and chicken filets, bought from our butchers or supermarkets? (Tim Green)
July 7, 2021
By Bill Berkowitz
Working at meatpacking plants is one of the country’s most dangerous jobs. Last year, as the coronavirus was beginning to grip the nation, the president declared meat-processing plants as critical infrastructure, amid fear of disruptions to the food supply. Production lines were sped up, social distancing was nearly impossible, and COVID-19 protocols were frequently disregarded. If workers got sick, they were forced to choose between taking care of themselves and their families by staying away from plants or losing their jobs. Outbreaks of coronavirus affected workers – mostly people of color -- at dozens of meatpacking plants across the country. Incarcerated people, working in prison-labor programs known as work release, faced no respite: Instead of going home after a shift, they shuffled from the factory floor to the jailhouse cell.
According to a new report from The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting’s Madison McVan titled “Some incarcerated meatpacking workers spent ‘100 percent’ of their time in high-risk settings during pandemic,” “JBS, like many meatpacking companies, hires incarcerated people to work the dangerous job of cutting and packing meat for Americans' dinners. As the pandemic roared on, some of these workers found themselves at the intersection of two of the riskiest settings in the country where people were packed in tight: correctional facilities and meatpacking plants.”
As Sky Chadde, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, and Kyle Bagenstose, Veronica Martinez Jacobo and Rachel Axon, for USA TODAY reported in May of last year, “The meatpacking industry has evolved into a marvel of modern efficiency, producing 105 billion pounds annually of poultry, pork, beef and lamb destined for dinner tables across America and the world. That’s nearly double what it produced three decades ago. But its evolution came at a cost. The same features that allow a steady churn of cheap meat also provide the perfect breeding ground for airborne diseases like the coronavirus: a cramped workplace, a culture of underreporting illnesses, and a cadre of rural, immigrant and undocumented workers who share transportation and close living quarters.”
The connection between coronavirus spread in meatpacking plants and the widespread number of cases in jails is difficult to uncover. Nevertheless, as Madison McVan reported: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found examples of two meatpacking plants in Idaho contributing to the spread of cases in correctional facilities, but the agency only examined the connection in that state. And other examples hinted at a possible connection: In Wisconsin, work release was halted last year at the Kenosha Beef plant after several employees tested positive for coronavirus, according to the Kenosha News.
“And in Nebraska, the first coronavirus case in a prison was at a work release facility that sent workers to two meatpacking plants, according to the Omaha World-Herald. The article did not say if the sick prisoner was employed by one of the meatpacking plants.”
As longtime activist Randy Gould, editor of the “Oread ‘not exactly’ Daily,” noted, “Prison labor is the closest we come today to slavery in the USA. Even the old slavers had some regard for the health of their slaves when they thought it might affect the value of their human property. Not so with incarcerated laborers as there is always a fresh supply…same goes for meatpacking workers.”
In May, NBC News’ Amy Martyn reported that :”Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, at least 270 U.S. meatpacking workers have died of the disease and thousands more were infected, according to lawmakers and the Food & Environment Reporting Network.”
Martyn noted that “A U.S. House subcommittee is currently investigating the three biggest meatpackers in the country — Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and JBS USA — and it is looking into OSHA because the worker safety agency waited months before inspecting factories where workers had complained about outbreaks.”
Food & Water Watch recently reported that it, represented by Public Justice, had “filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against Smithfield Foods, alleging that the multinational meat processing company repeatedly lied to consumers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic so it could protect its bottom line—at the expense of its workers’ lives.
“Throughout the pandemic, Smithfield mounted an aggressive public relations campaign based on two claims: that the company was protecting workers at its facilities from COVID-19, and that meat shortages were coming if processing plants were forced to close. Today’s lawsuit alleges that both claims were lies.”
Despite promises made during the presidential campaign to protect frontline workers, including meatpacking workers, President Joe Biden has not followed through. As Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott recently reported, “On June 10, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the US Department of Labor, released long-awaited new rules to protect vulnerable workers from the virus. In a move that stunned labor advocates, the rules, which include an obligation to ensure 6 feet of distance between workers as well as paid time off “’to get vaccinated and to recover from any side effects,’ only apply to the healthcare industry—leaving out other vulnerable workers.”
Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland, California-based freelance writer covering right-wing movements. His work has appeared in BuzzFlash, The Nation, Huffington Post, The Progressive, AlterNet, Street Sheet, In These Times, and many other print and online publications, as well as being cited in several books.
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