TSN Tyson Foods

By Jacob Bunge 

The U.S. Department of Labor fined Smithfield Foods Inc. over a Covid-19 outbreak that infected nearly 1,300 workers and led to four deaths at a South Dakota plant, alleging that the pork giant failed to protect employees.

The action is the federal government's first Covid-19 related penalty for a meatpacker, the Labor Department said. It comes after the novel coronavirus rapidly spread last spring among workers that power the $213 billion U.S. meat industry, forcing Smithfield and other companies to temporarily close plants and disrupting the supply of meat to grocery stores.

Smithfield said it would contest the citation, which carries a proposed $13,494 fine, the maximum allowed by law, according to the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Smithfield's Sioux Falls, S.D. plant is one of the pork industry's biggest, with about 3,700 workers slaughtering nearly 20,000 hogs daily. After the facility was linked to more than 200 Covid-19 infections in early April, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem urged Smithfield to close it for an extended period.

The company did, but Chief Executive Kenneth Sullivan warned that plant closures would threaten the U.S. food supply and leave farmers to deal with tens of thousands of unsold hogs.

Shoulder-to-shoulder processing line work, typical in U.S. meat plants, helped make them early coronavirus hot spots, and U.S. health officials estimated more than 17,000 meatpacking workers were infected in April and May, with 91 deaths. The pandemic spurred a succession of shutdowns at plants owned by Tyson Foods Inc., JBS USA Holdings Inc., Cargill Inc. and other meatpackers, sharply reducing U.S. meat production and forcing some supermarkets to limit consumer meat purchases.

OSHA said Thursday that after inspecting the Sioux Falls facility, Smithfield was found to have violated a requirement to provide a workplace free from hazards that could cause death or serious harm to employees. The agency said that at least 1,294 workers at the plant contracted Covid-19 over the spring, and four died.

"Employers must quickly implement appropriate measures to protect their workers' safety and health," said Sheila Stanley, OSHA's Sioux Falls area director.

Smithfield, which is based in Virginia and owned by Hong Kong-based meat company WH Group, blasted OSHA for citing the company over plant conditions in March when the agency didn't issue guidelines for the meat industry until late April. The company requested that OSHA visit sooner, but the agency did not, said Keira Lombardo, Smithfield's head of corporate affairs.

"Despite this fact, we figured it out on our own," she said. Ms. Lombardo added that Smithfield spent $350 million on coronavirus-related expenses from April to July, and that OSHA had pointed to some of Smithfield's actions as a model for other meatpackers. Smithfield's plant was affected by a broader coronavirus outbreak in Sioux Falls, she said.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents employees at the Smithfield plant, called the proposed fine insulting and insufficient to ensure employers safeguard workers' health.

"OSHA has been asleep at the switch throughout this pandemic and this is just the latest example of the agency failing to do their job and take responsibility for worker safety," said Marc Perrone, the union's president.

An OSHA spokeswoman didn't immediately comment.

Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 10, 2020 18:33 ET (22:33 GMT)

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