File photo taken on June 16, 2013, shows the logo of Smithfield Foods, Inc. at its headquarters in Smithfield, Virginia, the United States. (Xinhua/Zhang Jun)
"At this point, we are not doing anything to cast them in a bad light. Will not throw them to the Press," says a county health official in Colorado of an outbreak at a Cargill plant.
NEW YORK, May 26 (Xinhua) -- As crowded working conditions and pressure to stay open have made meatpacking plants some of the United States' biggest breeding grounds for coronavirus infections, meat companies' reluctance to disclose detailed case counts makes it difficult to assess how serious the contagion has become in these crucial links of the Americans' food chain, local media reported Tuesday.
The Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel -- a town located in North Carolina's Bladen County, is one of the world's largest pork processing facilities, employing about 4,500 people and slaughtering roughly 30,000 pigs a day at its peak. Like more than 100 other meat plants across the United States, the facility has seen a substantial number of coronavirus cases, but the exact number is "anyone's guess," according to a report by The New York Times.
File photo taken on June 16, 2013, shows a statue depicting the birth of ham at the headquarters of Smithfield Foods in Smithfield, Virginia, the United States. (Xinhua/Zhang Jun)
Smithfield would not provide any data when asked about the number of illnesses at the plant. Neither would state or local health officials, said the report.
"There has been a stigma associated with the virus," Teresa Duncan, director of Bladen County Health Department, was quoted as saying. "So we're trying to protect privacy."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers infected with the virus as of the end of last month, but the nonprofit group Food and Environment Reporting Network estimated last week that the number had climbed to more than 17,000, according to the report.
File photo taken on June 16, 2013, shows the headquarters of Smithfield Foods in Smithfield, Virginia, the United States. (Xinhua/Zhang Jun)
"The outbreaks may be even more extensive," said the report, adding that "the mixed messages left many workers and their communities in the dark about the extent of the spread in parts of Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado."
"At this point, we are not doing anything to cast them in a bad light. Will not throw them to the Press," said a county health official in Colorado of an outbreak at a Cargill plant, according to the report that cited notes from a conference call last month.
As of Tuesday noon, the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States has topped 1.66 million, and the national death toll is nearing the dreaded milestone of 100,000, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. ■
