In the face of an unprecedented public health crisis, the federal agency responsible for workplace safety has essentially allowed meatpackers to regulate themselves—leading to chaos, confusion, and fear in facilities across the country.

In April, as the first wave of Covid-19 infections began to spread across the U.S., the nation’s largest hotspot wasn’t in New York City. It wasn’t in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, or any major urban center. It was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a small city of about 190,000.

Specifically, it was in the Smithfield Foods pork plant on the north side of town, nestled into a bend in the Big Sioux River. By April 16, 644 cases had been traced back to the plant—44 percent of all the cases in South Dakota at the time—pushing Sioux Falls to the top of the New York Times’ list of single-source hotspots. As of September, Smithfield’s Sioux Falls plant had reported nearly 1,300 coronavirus cases among its employees, about one-third of the plant’s total workforce. Four of those workers died.

For a brief period, the crisis at the Sioux Falls plant was front-page news. But the nation’s attention had largely moved on by September 10, when the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) finally cited Smithfield for failing to protect its workers at Sioux Falls.

American meatpackers have largely evaded responsibility for their central role in the pandemic. According to a map of Covid-19 cases in the food system by the Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN), more than 49,000 meatpacking workers have tested positive since March. Of these, 254 have lost their lives to the virus. And yet federal and state regulatory agencies have done little to hold these companies accountable.

Read the full article about COVID outbreaks in slaughterhouses by Nick Roberts and Rosa Amanda Tuirán at The Counter.