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WASHINGTON -- House members may disagree on how well the COVID-19 pandemic is being handled, but they do seem to agree on one thing: workers in meatpacking and poultry processing plants should be given higher priority for vaccination than they are right now.

"It's becoming very clear through the entire COVID crisis that vaccines are the way out," said Rep. Andy Harris, MD (R-Md.), during a hearing on health and safety protections for meat, poultry, and agricultural workers held by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. "Given the data we have gotten in the last couple of weeks that it seems that a single shot of Pfizer or Moderna is almost as good as two shots -- and hopefully the FDA will revise the EUA [emergency use authorization] to allow that -- we could be freeing up 20 or 30 million doses in the next month, some of which could go to these workers. "

Subcommittee Chairman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called getting COVID vaccines for these workers "critical and important" but said that other issues needed to be addressed as well. "Many meatpacking and agricultural companies have blatantly put profits over people, and few are being held to account," she said. A study of by occupational sector found that "more workers have died of COVID-19 in meat and poultry plants to date during the pandemic than died from all causes in the industry in the past 15 years ... Meat, poultry, and agriculture companies continue to pursue faster production practices such as accelerated line speeds," which make it hard for the workers, who are often working shoulder-to-shoulder, to be moved further apart for social distancing purposes.

PPE Lacking

Carmen Rottenberg, managing director at the Groundswell Group, an industry consulting firm, agreed that vaccination was one of several high priorities for worker protection. "It's really important to get workers vaccinated to eliminate hazards and continue with multi-layer mitigations that work," said Rottenberg, who headed the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service under President Trump. "The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Meat Institute, just before Christmas, sent a letter emphasizing that quickly vaccinating this workforce would maximize health benefits; it's absolutely critical."

"In many states, agricultural workers are in the '1B' phase, but as more vaccines come online, modifications are made as to who gets into the 1A group; I'm very concerned we're skipping past these essential workers," Rottenberg said, adding that meatpacking and poultry companies "have the resources to help with vaccination."

Committee members also heard from Dulce Casteñada, a member of Children of Smithfield, an advocacy group formed by the children of workers at the Smithfield pork processing company. "I come from a small rural community of 7,000 people in Crete, Nebraska; my father has worked at Smithfield Foods in Crete for quarter of a century," she explained. "But she said she and other Children of Smithfield had heard from their parents that they had no personal PPE [personal protective equipment] and were not told when they were exposed to employees with COVID-19. "It came as no surprise that COVID would ravage meatpacking plants as workers worked shoulder-to-shoulder and common areas are small and congested," she said.

Casteñada said she had "witnessed continued blatant disregard" for workers, and that her father told her that the company had given him and his colleagues hairnets and tried to pass them off as PPE; colleagues said the company had made them reuse masks that had gotten soaked with animal blood. But workers like her father "are too scared to speak out; they're afraid they'll lose their jobs and their health insurance," said Casteñada. "They cannot leave work in the middle of the day to attend a public hearing, not to mention the retaliation they'd likely face from their employer." When healthcare workers attempted to do their own contact tracing for the source of COVID infection, the company's human resources department ordered them not to disclose their test results to one another, she said.

Deborah Berkowitz, Worker Safety and Health Program director at the National Employment Law Project, said that when the pandemic began, "workers at meat and poultry plants were still required to work elbow-to-elbow and shoulder-to-shoulder." When the meatpacking industry installed flimsy plastic shields on the sides of workers, "the CDC told the industry there was no evidence that they worked, and they had to be used in addition to keeping workers 6 feet apart; that was ignored," Berkowitz added.

Little OSHA Enforcement

Complicating the problem is the fact that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) "abdicated all responsibility" for the plants during the Trump administration, Berkowitz said. "They're decided to stop almost all enforcement.... There were 13,000 complaints filed and the agency closed almost every single one without an inspection. Had OSHA done its job, the spread of COVID-19 would have been mitigated."

One of those complaints was filed by Casteñada after Smithfield offered its Crete plant employees a "responsibility bonus" for good attendance, which incentivized many workers who were sick with COVID to continue coming to work. "In late May of last year, at least 139 Crete Smithfield workers had tested positive for COVID. I filed a complaint with OSHA and received a call from an official who told me OSHA did not see a reason to inspect the plant because according to the information Smithfield had provided, the company was doing everything possible to contain the virus," she said. "The agency effectively ignored my complaint without conducting an inspection or talking to workers."

Varying Views on the Industry

Committee members had varying views of how well the industry was doing at protecting its workers. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said that as a small business owner, "I'm disgusted by their greed and guile by a number of these companies." He singled out Tyson, a chicken processor, for a controversy over managers at one of its plants who were on how many employees there would get the coronavirus.

Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), whose state is home to a number of meat processors, had a different take. "A successful response requires government to work with industry," he said. "Companies in the industry have been consistently taking proactive steps to insure the safety of workers," he said. "Many in the industry were taking care to go above safety standards ... Congress should prioritize funds in relief measures to ensure these essential workers who support our critical supply chains are able to continue to provide food for the nation and take care of their own families."

Cline ended by inviting committee members to tour meat processing plants in his district if they didn't have one in their district. "The innovation going on is outstanding," he said. DeLauro demurred. "I've been to several poultry processing plants in your district and come to quite a different conclusion in terms of the safety of workers and the kind of protection they require," she said.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the committee's ranking member, said he was concerned that even though additional safety measures are being taken now, "What I'd worry about, once the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, would we backslide?" he said. "I don't want to go back to where we were, where this particular group was particularly vulnerable."

DeLauro proposed that "in fiscal year 2022, we need to prioritize additional resources to OSHA to increase inspections on the ground to protect workers." She said she was working with Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) to add $150 million in Department of Labor worker protection funding in the COVID relief bill currently in Congress to address the issue; $75 million of those funds would go to OSHA to support additional enforcement at dangerous workplaces. In addition, "OSHA must issue clear, effective, and comprehensive requirements" to guarantee safety for workers, starting with issuing an emergency temporary infectious disease standard, she said.

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