House Panel: Meat Producers Faked Shortages To Avoid Lockdown And Wrote Trump’s Order Exempting Them

The Washington Post reports:

The biggest players in the U.S. meat industry pressed “baseless” claims of beef and pork shortages early in the pandemic to persuade the Trump White House to keep processing plants running, disregarding the coronavirus risks that eventually killed at least 269 workers, according to a special House committee.

In a report released Thursday, the committee alleges that Tyson Foods’s legal team prepared a draft with input from other companies that became the basis for an executive order to keep the plants open the Trump administration issued in April 2020, making it difficult for workers to stay home.

In the run-up to the publication of the executive order, executives from Smithfield and Tyson held calls with members of the Trump White House, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short.

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Meat producers made ‘baseless’ claims about pandemic shortages to persuade Trump White House to keep plants open, House panel finds https://t.co/IJmV5QgLsu

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 12, 2022