According to a congressional report released on Thursday, the country's largest meatpackers successfully lobbied the Trump administration to keep processing plants open despite knowing the health risks to their workers.
The meat industry's influence on the administration's response to the swine flu was described in a report. The Tyson Foods legal department drafted the initial version of the executive order.
The chairman of the committee, Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said the findings showed the companies were interested in the health of their workers.
He said in a statement that the shameful conduct of corporate executives pursuing profit at any cost during a crisis and government officials eager to do their bidding regardless of resulting harm to the public must never be repeated.
The committee said in October that there were about 59,000 workers who contracted the virus from March 1, 2020 to February 1, 2021.
The meatpacking companies and trade groups disagreed with the findings.
The North American Meat Institute said that the report ignores the rigorous and comprehensive measures companies enacted to protect employees and support critical infrastructure workers.
The report is based on 151,000 pages of documents, over a dozen calls with meatpacking workers, union representatives and former government officials, and staff briefings with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Agriculture Department.
Slaughterhouses, where people work in close proximity, became hot spots in the early weeks of the Pandemic. The country was at risk of running out of meat because of plant closings, according to warnings issued by executives at Tyson Foods.
There was a record amount of pork exported to China that month. The North American Meat Institute described the warnings as "intentionally scaring" in emails obtained by the House committee.
The report shows how industry representatives enlisted top Trump administration officials in order to convince workers to stay at work.
In an April call, the chief executives of meat companies asked the agriculture secretary to convey to workers that being afraid of Covid-19 is not a reason to quit their job.
During a White House news conference four days later, Vice President Mike Pence assured food workers that the administration was working with all of their companies to make sure that they did their jobs.
According to the report, Ms. Brashears was the former under secretary for food safety at the Agriculture Department.
Neither Mr. Perdue nor Ms. Brashears responded to questions.
The documents obtained by the House committee show that top officials at the Agriculture Department were contacted by the executives of Smithfield to suggest changes to federal health recommendations for one of its facilities in South Dakota.
The final guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a few things in common with an earlier version obtained by The Washington Post.
The former C.D.C. director told the committee that he added the qualifiers because he was persuaded by industry concerns and Mr. Perdue's understanding of an impending meat shortage.
Jim Monroe said in a statement that the concerns they expressed were very real.
Did we make every effort to share our perspective on the Pandemic and how it was impacting the food production system? Mr. Monroe said yes.
The meatpacking industry wanted a federal directive to invoke the Defense Production Act as states and local governments enacted their own lockdowns. Mr. Trump's executive order adopted the themes and statutory directive laid out in Tyson's draft.
The executive order did not require meat processing plants to stay open, but it did reduce legal liability for the companies if they followed coronaviruses guidelines.
Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson, said that the company has been contacted by many different federal, state and local officials, including both the Trump and Biden administrations.
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