Meatpacker JBS has defended measures it has taken in Brazil during the pandemic, telling Reuters it has hired renowned consultants to advise it on health and safety
SÃO PAULO - JBS SA, the world’s largest meatpacker, has vowed to keep the world fed during the coronavirus pandemic. Executives say the company has added more than 15,000 new workers in Brazil this year to crank out cuts of chicken, pork and beef, a lot of it for export. The meat giant’s $629 million second-quarter net profit was almost twice what analysts expected.
With more than 4.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases, Brazil trails only the United States and India in the size of its outbreak; almost 127,000 Brazilians have died. Some JBS plants have become a locus of community spread, Brazilian health officials and prosecutors said. JBS, in contrast, largely has resisted prosecutors’ calls to perform such testing, which is not expressly required under Brazilian law.
Prosecutors are seeking rigorous testing and quarantine protocols, adequate personal protective gear and greater spacing between laborers in the Brazilian meat factories. They are also asking JBS for damages ranging between 3 million reais and 20 million reais to help local communities near most of the affected plants procure medical equipment and fund social projects.
The sixth plant is a pork operation in Três Passos in southern Rio Grande do Sul state. A local labor judge ordered that plant to furlough with pay for 14 days all workers who had tested positive for COVID-19, and to test the rest for coronavirus, according to a June 22 court order seen by Reuters. All told, JBS operates 135 facilities in Brazil, including beef, chicken, pork and leather plants, as well as offices and distribution centers. Those operations account for about one-fifth of its global revenue. JBS employs 240,000 people worldwide, including 135,000 in Brazil.Coronavirus is the latest headache for JBS, which has been rocked by graft and food-safety scandals in recent years. Those woes battered its stock price, pushed back a coveted U.S. share listing and led to massive fines.
In Brazil, JBS has not always followed its own pledges, according to court documents and interviews with prosecutors, unions and employees. At a beef facility in the city of Araputanga, also in Mato Grosso, prosecutors said the situation was “out of epidemiological control,” with 51 infections among a workforce of 1,070, court filings dated Aug. 4 show.Brazil’s meat sector, like that in much of the world, has been hit hard by COVID-19. Federal health officials in Brazil do not track cases by industry, so the total number of meatpacking infections is unknown.
A key commitment agreed to by all those companies: They would pay for ongoing, routine testing of workers to spot cases early. Marfrig said it started testing all its 18,000 employees on June 1. BRF, which employs about 90,000 people in Brazil and is the nation’s largest chicken exporter, told Reuters it has conducted 11,000 tests at its Toledo plant alone, located in Paraná state.
The company has had some success with its approach. On July 3, a state appeals court judge ordered the Passo Fundo poultry plant reopened, ruling that keeping it closed “could cause job losses, reduce tax collection and threaten food supplies.” “The plant is the main source of contamination and transmission in this little town,” Wadler Ferreira, a local labor judge, said in his ruling. The São Miguel do Guaporé plant, which employed 900 people when the outbreak happened, is the town’s largest employer.
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