Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP
A man wearing a face mask and shield at the entrance to the Smithfield plant in Crete, Nebraska, April 28, 2020
Every day, during A.’s lunch break at the Smithfield meatpacking plant in Crete, Nebraska, he calls home to check in with his wife. Typically, these conversations are quick and mundane—How are you? How’s work?—but as a rash of COVID-19 outbreaks began occurring in meatpacking plants around the country, talk has shifted to “Have they given you masks yet?” She asked A. this same question nearly every day in April and, according to A.’s daughter Dulce, “He would say, ‘No, everything is normal here. Things haven’t changed at all.’”
But things were not normal. By April, public schools in Nebraska had been closed for weeks. Most of the nation was under stay-at-home orders, though Nebraska was a rare holdout. A Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, made national headlines as a new hot spot, but continued operating until April 14, three weeks after the first confirmed case, by which point the total number of employee infections had ballooned to 438.
After witnessing what happened in Sioux Falls, Dulce realized the same thing could occur at her father’s Smithfield plant in Crete, which employs around 2,100 workers, about a third of the city’s population. In response, Dulce joined Children of Smithfield, an ad hoc advocacy group to raise awareness of the plight of meatpacking workers and to pressure local officials and Smithfield to improve working conditions.
But just like in Sioux Falls, Smithfield’s response in Crete was sluggish, and placed the burden of worker health on individual employees, despite clear signs for urgent action.
Just like in Sioux Falls, Smithfield’s response in Crete was sluggish, and placed the burden of worker health on individual employees, despite clear signs for urgent action.
“They started giving them hairnets to cover their faces,” Dulce told me, which, according to a “playbook” for meatpacking companies published by health experts, “provide no protection.” Next, Smithfield asked workers to bring their own face masks, which A.’s wife sewed for him. It wasn’t until late April that Smithfield started handing out disposable masks in every department.
Regulatory inquiries were also snubbed. Documents obtained through FOIA show that, on Monday, April 20, a request for a conference call to “discuss the Smithfield situation in Crete” from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Public Health Solutions, the local health department, went unanswered until Friday, April 24. Even then, Crete’s HR manager’s only response was to redirect the request to his regional supervisor. By April 28, A.’s last day at work, 87 positive cases had been confirmed in Saline County and, of those, 47 were associated with Smithfield.
The documents show Smithfield’s interest in identifying workers who tested positive, but little else. There were no examinations into preemptive measures or worker safety, nor a willingness to share close contacts of workers who tested positive.
This obtuse posture mirrors that of Gov. Pete Ricketts, who announced on May 6 that state health officials would cease sharing health data about how many workers had been infected at each plant and, similar to meatpacking companies, carried on with business as usual by refusing to issue a stay-at-home order. To emphasize the importance of the meatpacking industry to Nebraska’s economy, Ricketts declared May as “Beef Month.”
Attrition would soon catch up to the plants. Active workers in one department in Crete fell from 107 people to 9 in just two weeks in the month of April, according to one worker who requested I use the pseudonym Lee. Workers were sent home if they tested positive, were in close contact with someone who tested positive, or were exhibiting symptoms such as headaches or shortness of breath. On May 13, the day we spoke, Lee was notified of the first death in their plant. “I’ve been on edge waiting,” said Lee, “because there’s a really good chance that I know them after being there 30 years.”
Smithfield has been a vector for other plants in Crete as well. According to B., a worker at Smart Chicken in Waverly, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of company retaliation, “the people who are sick [in Waverly] have family members working at the Crete pork plant.” It is common, B. explained, for multiple members of a single family to work at plants in Crete or Waverly, which are only 40 miles apart.
“My co-worker’s wife works at the Crete plant,” B. told me. “The wife has it and he took the test and does not have it.” Smart Chicken did instruct the husband to stay home until his wife was cleared by a doctor, due to the possibility of infection. But workers may have spouses at other plants who carry COVID-19 but have not yet been tested, increasing the possibility of plant-to-plant spread.
Social distancing has been considered not feasible, because many plants continue to operate at the fullest capacity possible.
We know that meatpacking plants throughout the country are highly conducive to spreading an airborne illness like COVID-19. The plants are large, open-air facilities equipped with sophisticated ventilation systems. On the line, employees work elbow to elbow, and the work is so strenuous that many breathe heavily, as if exercising, which warrants more than six feet of physical distance.
According to the Food and Environment Reporting Network, as of May 28, the average infection rate in rural counties with meatpacking plants was nearly 1,100 per 100,000, five times greater than similar counties without plants. That per capita figure even surpasses counties in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic. Using data from state and local health departments and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, USA Today ranked 50 counties in the U.S. based on infection rates per capita. Nebraska had four counties in the top 20, all of which have meatpacking plants.
ON APRIL 28, President Trump ordered meatpacking plants to stay open, using the Defense Production Act. But despite the federal order to stay open, plants have received little support from the government other than unenforceable guidelines.
Though Smithfield has implemented many safety recommendations, social distancing has been considered not feasible, because many plants continue to operate at the fullest capacity possible. Despite the loss of workers, line speeds have remained consistent. Line speed has long been a concern of meatpacking workers, who wield electric knives, navigate slippery floors, and can perform the same repetitive motion anywhere between 20,000 and 100,000 times per shift.
“Based on what public-health scientists know about transmission [of COVID-19], the best advice we are all getting is to socially distance,” said Celeste Monforton, chair of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association. But instead of spreading workers out, plants have installed plexiglass barriers in between places on the lines. It’s unclear whether these dividers are properly disinfected after every shift and between breaks, or whether workers must toil in potentially contaminated environments.
Monforton expressed concern that the hastily installed dividers are “potentially messing up your air flow and you may have to adjust your ventilation system.” These concerns were echoed by workers, one of whom feared plastic dividers would make the plant “a bigger petri dish.” Some wonder whether plastic dividers actually help reduce spread, or merely generate a good photo op.
“Plants are looking at these physical barriers as a means to not have to physical distance, but, for me, it seems much more complicated,” Monforton said. She questioned why plants wouldn’t stop operating at full capacity until the outbreak is under control. “It’s not really about safety, it’s about not wanting to affect the bottom line,” she added.
To be clear, physical dividers are not necessarily harmful—they have been deployed widely in grocery stores and other retail stores to reduce spread—but unless properly used and maintained, they can become sites of contamination.
Lack of transparency, on the part of both state health officials and large meatpacking companies, has left many communities in the dark.
The COVID-19 “playbook” for meatpacking facilities, jointly published by the Global Center for Health Security and the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, features an extensive list of recommendations, including a universal mask policy, disinfection procedures, and a flexible sick leave policy. But personal protective equipment (PPE) measures are seen as less effective hazard controls than isolating workers or changing their work conditions, because PPE depends on individual users.
This is not to say PPE is not important, but rather to stress that unless workers are taught how to properly use PPE, they risk contaminating the very equipment meant to protect them. In plants like Smithfield Crete, where over 30 different languages are spoken, physical demonstrations in addition to verbal instruction are crucial to effectively communicate proper use of PPE.
“Nobody did anything about telling these people how to put [masks] on and off, they just hand them out,” said Lee. “They’re touching inside the mask, outside the mask … laying them on break tables.”
Lack of transparency, on the part of both state health officials and large meatpacking companies, has left many communities in the dark. Without data on infections, it is difficult to know how effective newly implemented safety measures have been.
As of this writing, there have been 508 confirmed cases in Saline County and two deaths. A. was able to extend his time off, but expects to return to work in the near future. Though the rate of confirmed cases in Saline County has declined in recent weeks, it is unclear if this will continue to be the case as more and more workers return to the plant.
Meatpacking has long been a brutal industry, consistently ranking the highest for workplace injury and illness rates. But the pandemic, Monforton said, “has just exacerbated the poor working conditions that already existed,” and layered on “a whole new mountain of hazards.”
