The Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, is one of the world's largest pork processing facilities, employing about 4,500 people and slaughtering roughly 30,000 pigs a day at its peak.And like more than 100 other meat plants across the United States, the facility has seen a substantial
The Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, is one of the world’s largest pork processing facilities, employing about 4,500 people and slaughtering roughly 30,000 pigs a day at its peak.
Along with nursing homes and prisons, meatpacking facilities have proved to be places where the virus spreads rapidly. But as dozens of plants that closed because of outbreaks begin reopening, meat companies’ reluctance to disclose detailed case counts makes it difficult to tell whether the contagion is contained or new cases are emerging even with new safety measures in place.
The meat companies are not legally required to disclose how many workers are sick. But legal experts say privacy is not a valid reason for keeping the numbers from the public. After some slaughterhouses did close, restaurants and stores experienced significant shortages of meat, leading Trump to issue an executive order designating meat plants “critical infrastructure” that must stay open.
But the county’s lawyer asked that the language be revised to read, “At this time, we ask you to consider this be implemented as soon as possible.” In North Carolina, workers and community advocates in the Tar Heel area started to raise the alarm in April, as local news outlets reported a string of infections linked to the Smithfield plant.
Smithfield said it continued to “report all COVID-19 cases to state and local health officials, as well as the CDC” and was working to provide free testing to all its employees. Those transparency issues were on display last month when Teresa Anderson, the director of the Central District Health Department in Grand Island, Nebraska, told meat processor JBS that she planned to conduct coronavirus testing at a park near the company’s plant, which employs 3,700 people.“We understand that you will be asking and recording the employer,” Nicholas White, a compliance official at JBS, wrote in an email to Anderson on April 15.
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