MAY 16, 2022:
The North American Meat Institute says the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis’ recent report distorts the truth about the meat and poultry industry’s efforts to protect workers from COVID. The report says meatpackers worked with the Trump administration to make sure they could stay open during the pandemic.
Julie Anna Potts is president and CEO of the North American Meat Institute, the national trade association for the meat and poultry packers and processors. “The Meat Institute and its member companies voluntarily provided hundreds of thousands of pages to the Committee,” she says. “The report ignores the rigorous and comprehensive measures companies enacted to protect employees and support their critical infrastructure workers.”
She also says the meat industry spent billions of dollars to reverse COVID-19’s trajectory. “The committee uses 20-20 hindsight and cherry-picks data to support a narrative that doesn’t tell the whole story of the early days of a national emergency,” Potts adds.
MAY 12, 2022:
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A new congressional report says that in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, the meat processing industry worked closely with political appointees in the Trump administration to stave off health restrictions and keep slaughterhouses open even as COVID-19 spread rapidly among workers. The report issued Thursday (May 12, 2022) says meat companies pushed to keep their plants open even though they knew workers were at high risk. The lobbying led to health and labor officials watering down recommendations for the industry and culminated in an executive order from President Donald Trump designating meat plants as critical infrastructure that needed to remain open. The North American Meat Institute trade group says the report distorts the truth and ignores steps companies took to protect workers.
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