COVID-19 cases rising again at Smithfield plant as standards relax, union leader says

SIOUX FALLS -- Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, spent hundreds of millions of dollars and assigned a team of dedicated employees to enforce social distancing and sanitize surfaces last year after the Sioux Falls plant became the site of one of the nation's largest COVID-19 outbreaks early in the pandemic.

Those monitor roles have since been cut, right as cases of COVID-19 increase nationwide; in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and at that Smithfield plant, union leaders say.

In a statement to Reuters, China-owned Smithfield Foods confirmed that it shifted the monitors' duties to other personnel starting in the second part of 2021 after vaccines became more available and the routines became “second nature.”

United Food & Commercial Workers Union leader B.J. Motley told the Argus Leader that many workers at Smithfield have COVID-19 once again. The company has been doing daily testing as the Omicron variant rises, but monitor duties were cut, he said.

Read more: https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/business-journal/2022/01/07/union-covid-19-cases-rise-again-sioux-falls-smithfield-foods-plant-pandemic-outbreak-cdc-osha/9119587002/