1/ In March, the CEO @SmithfieldFoods, a food company, described social distancing as “a nicety that makes sense only for people with laptops.”

He was talking about workers @ meatpacking plants — the places that process the meat you eat.

That’s not all. We got some emails

2/ In Western Kentucky, health officials suspected a local @PerdueChicken plant wasn’t giving them the full picture of what was going on inside.

“We are hearing stories of management pressuring people to work while symptomatic,” the health director wrote.

3/ One worker who tested positive and still had a cough and sore throat told the department that Perdue told him “as long as he didn’t have a fever he needed to return to work.”

4/ Another who tested positive said Perdue had fired her because “they didn’t believe I was sick.”

Nearly 300 workers have tested positive and at least one has died. Perdue said it has strictly followed CDC guidelines and the safety of its employees is its top concern.

5/ As the coronavirus swept through the nation’s meatpacking plants this spring, chaotic scenes have played out in small towns that have become some of the country’s biggest hot spots.

6/ The candid, often emotional, messages provide a real-time reckoning of how the companies responsible for a critical part of the food supply chain were hazardously unprepared.

7/ They also show how a system that relies on tiny local public health agencies was quickly overwhelmed by dealing with the consequences.

8/ In Tama, Iowa, where more than 250 workers at a National Beef plant tested positive for the virus, one local health official emailed her colleagues this meme:

9/ The county emergency management coordinator later wrote: “They will keep going until all of their employees have this virus. They would rather risk their employees’ health and keep their production going.”

10/ Where’s the beef? We don’t know.

National Beef didn't respond to our requests for comments.

11/ The nation’s meatpackers have for years planned for pandemic flu outbreaks that could wipe out herds and flocks and threaten America’s food supply.

12/ But those efforts focused on animals rather than the army of humans — mostly immigrants, refugees and African Americans — hired to slaughter them and cut them up for restaurants and groceries.

13/ The failure to have a coordinated plan for workers left small communities vulnerable. More than 25,000 coronavirus cases have been tied to meatpacking plants, @MichaelGrabell, @clairelyperlman and @bmyeung found, and at least 92 workers have died. https://propub.li/3hCgOKi 

14/ Get our investigations: https://propub.li/2zEcJ7x