ProPublica also reported that the meat industry dismissed government warnings to prepare for a pandemic by stockpiling masks and developing plans to space out workers on processing lines .
But documents uncovered in a wrongful death lawsuit filed this week in Iowa show that while Tyson was slow to adopt safety measures to protect U . S . workers , it moved swiftly to do so at its plants in China , with extensive protocols , including a mask requirement and reduced production , in place by mid- February 2020 — more than a month before cases showed up in U . S . plants .
The effect that the meatpacking plant outbreaks had on the early spread of COVID-19 is staggering . ProPublica and other news outlets tracked cases and deaths involving meatpacking workers . But academic researchers have found that by July 2020 , about 6 % to 8 % of all coronavirus cases in the U . S . were tied to packing plant outbreaks , and that by October 2020 , community spread from the plants had generated 334,000 illnesses and 18,000 COVID-19-related deaths .
Within the cache of new documents are allegations that meatpacking companies tried to hide cases . As workers began calling in sick at a Tyson pork plant in Waterloo , Iowa , the company ’ s workplace health managers instructed plant nurses not to record the absences as “ COVID-19 ,” but instead as “ flu-like symptoms ,” families of deceased workers said in their lawsuit . ProPublica reported extensively on how COVID cases at the plant spread through the community .
Similarly , when local health officials in California investigated an outbreak at a Foster Farms chicken plant , they discovered five additional deaths that had been marked not as fatalities , but instead as “ resolved cases ” or “ resolutions .” Health officials told the subcommittee that during a conference call with the U . S . Department of Agriculture , someone from either Foster Farms or the USDA jokingly called them “ toe tag resolutions ,” referring to the toe tags that are often put on corpses at morgues .
The new emails demonstrate that the primary goal of some meatpacking leaders was not to protect their employees as they had professed , but to get them to show up to work so they could keep producing meat .
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