Much is already known about how the meatpacking industry worked to influence the federal government to keep its plants operating despite large COVID-19 outbreaks. But just this morning, a Congressional subcommittee investigating the coronavirus crisis has released a new report that reveals new behind-the-scenes details.
In all, the report shows how meatpacking company CEOs, their lobbyists and politically appointed federal officials collaborated to keep plants running, at the expense of workers' safety.
One specific revelation is about one of the most powerful meatpacking companies in the U.S. We reported in 2020 that the industry's lobbying arm, the North American Meat Institute, supplied the White House with a draft version of an executive order the industry wanted enacted. Similar language in this draft would find its way into the official executive order President Trump signed a week later.
But Congress has found the true author of the draft version: Tyson Foods.
While not addressing the specific findings in the new report, the industry defended its efforts to protect worker safety during the pandemic.
- Madison McVan, reporter
Tyson Foods authored draft version of Trump’s 2020 executive order to keep meatpacking plants open during COVID-19 pandemic, emails show | Madison McVan, Investigate Midwest
Lawyers for Tyson Foods, one of America’s largest meatpacking companies, drafted an early version of a 2020 executive order that allowed plants to continue operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new Congressional report based on company emails shows.
Meet our Report for America fellows
In June, Investigate Midwest welcomes two Report for America journalists to our growing newsroom. Report for America is a national program that places emerging journalists into newsrooms to cover underreported topics.
Monica Cordero Sancho (left) has been published by Univision, Bloomberg Businessweek, La Noticia, Radio Ambulante, NPR, openDemocracy and The New York Times. She is a graduate of the University of Costa Rica and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Her past reporting won the 2020 Ortega y Gasset Journalism Award, the most prestigious journalism prize in the Spanish-speaking world, for best investigative reporting. Cordero will focus her work on agriculture's effects on the environment. She will report from Iowa.
Cora Lewis (right) reported on labor and breaking news for BuzzFeed News from 2015 to 2019. Since 2019, she has been enrolled in a graduate degree program at Washington University in St. Louis, which came with a two-year fellowship, and is at work on a book. In 2015, she received the Newswomen’s Club of NY Front Page Award for reporting on just-in-time scheduling in the retail industry. She will focus on the food system and its workers. She will report from Chicago.
NEW STORY: Despite case of bird flu in a human, experts say risk to public and poultry workers remains low | Madison McVan, Investigate Midwest
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the single case of avian flu detected in a human doesn’t change the risk level for the general public.
