Today I posted this news at ‘Frauds & Crooks’ but since I have so often written about JBS, and the other big meatpackers pushing for more refugee resettlement because they need the cheap and captive refugee laborers, the post could just as well have been posted here at RRW.
I’ve been telling you for a dozen years that the meatpacking industry is changing America one meatpacking town at a time.
Because they work for lower wages, Hispanics, Asians and African Refugees make up a large swath of the workforce at big plants owned by the likes of JBS and Tyson Foods.
But, all that may change as the global companies find the joys of automation in light of the Chinese virus crisis as I reported here recently. See also Neil Munro writing at Breitbart.
As long as they were getting a steady supply of new cheap immigrant labor the meat giants were not moving quickly to a robotic workforce.
And, long time readers know that federal resettlement contractors and the US State Department have been in cahoots for decades to supply them with refugee laborers.
Now comes another good reason for BIG MEAT to dump all this cheap ‘diverse’ labor.
An organization named Forward Latino and other groups from across the country filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against JBS and Tyson alleging racial discrimination during the COVID-19 response.
The organizations filed an administrative civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging that the Tyson and JBS adopted policies that rejected critical Centers for Disease Control guidance,including social distancing on meat processing lines, to stop the spread of COVID-19 at their processing facilities, according to a news release from Forward Latino.
The lawsuit was filed by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the Rural Community Workers Alliance, the HEAL Food Alliance, Forward Latino, American Friends Service Committee — Iowa, and the Idaho Organization of Resource Councils. They are represented by Public Justice, Nichols Kaster PLLP, and Towards Justice.
The lawsuit is seeking the termination of financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Tyson and JBS and for the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce compliance.
If you are wondering exactly how the Black and Brown workers are not treated the same, here is an explanation:
Joe Henry, Forward Latino National Vice President, has been involved with workers rights at meat packing plants during the pandemic.
“Tyson and JBS aren’t even trying to follow CDC guidance by distancing workers on the line or slowing line speed. They’re just trying to make as much profit as quickly as they can with their predominantly black and brown workforce in the factory,” Henry said.
“That’s not the case for their white collar divisions which are made up of more white or Caucasian people — they are allowed to work from home for their health and safety during this pandemic. Because these companies have received over $150 million just this year in taxpayer money, the USDA must investigate this injustice and act immediately to prevent any further worker illnesses and deaths.”
I have literally dozens of posts on the meatpacking industry and how it has been changing America by changing the people. See my tag for meatpackers.
Just as I was writing this post, I see news that another Tyson worker, this time in TN, has died from the Chinese virus.
Endnote: A reminder (again!) that you should be finding a local source of meat and poultry as a part of your family’s preparations for whatever might be headed our way this fall (and into the future).
That was last week’s news in the Denver Post. The Brazilian-owned plant was forced to close as 277 employees tested positive for the Chinese virus.
According to the Post, the closure was necessary earlier this month to avoid overwhelming local health care services.
State and local health officials in a Friday letter warned JBS CEO Andre Nogueira of the virus’ rapid spread among employees, particularly those who work the first shift at the plant, and said continued exponential spread would “quickly overwhelm” medical resources in Greeley and the surrounding communities.
The JBS slaughter house at Greeley, Colorado has played a large role over the years on the pages of RRW.
JBS US headquarters are in Greeley. This is a photo I took when I traveled through the Midwest and West in 2016 mostly to have a look at a few meatpacking towns.
In fact, it is through the controversy surrounding refugee (mostly Somali) workers there in 2008 that I became interested in the concept of foreign-owned meatpackers (I call BIG MEAT) encouraging the admission of cheap legal immigrant labor—refugees—which then changes the character of American towns.
Not to mention the fact that US taxpayers subsidize those low wage workers.
I had devoted an entire category I labeled Greeley, Swift, Somali controversy.See it here.Posts go back to 2008!
But problems for the beef giant are bigger than a few facility closings…..
We can thank the COVID-19 situation for helping to expose the globalist fat cats that own these plants—like the Brazilian brothers featured in the New York Poston Saturday. Hat tip: Judy.
And, don’t miss my post about Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods and how the leftwing media (and refugee contractors!) have for years supported the movement of migrants to the US to work these kinds of jobs.
Corrupt billionaire brothers’ meat plants are riddled with coronavirus
The world’s largest meat-processing giant was forced to shut down some of its US plants as more than 100 of its workers tested positive for COVID-19 last week, but the pandemic may be the least of its problems.
The Brazilian billionaire brothers — one of whom owned a Manhattan penthouse — controlling the massive meat producer JBS, which slaughters 13 million animals a day and has revenues of $50 billion a year, have been linked to high-level government corruption that has rocked the South American country.
The Batistas’ company is also being probed in America now for bribery, and has been accused of price-gouging during the COVID-19 crisis. The New York attorney general, meanwhile, has been asked to look at the company as “an imminent threat” before it goes public on Wall Street.
[….]
After admitting to bribing nearly 2,000 elected officials in Brazil in order to secure government funding to fuel their company’s US expansiona few years ago, Joesley and Wesley Batista were slapped with more than $3.2 billion in fines in 2017, the highest in the country’s history.
Now JBS’ parent company, J&F Investimentos, is reportedly the subject of US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations for alleged bribery here. Last year, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) urged the federal government to investigate the beef conglomerate and its alleged dealings with the Venezuelan government after the company developed business ties with the administration of President Nicolas Maduro. The US has levied sanctions against the Venezuelan leader.
Last week, US legislators, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), renewed calls for the federal government to investigate alleged price-fixing by JBS and other big beef producers during the pandemic. According to Grassley, big meat processors are using the pandemic to “gouge” US cattle producers.
[….]
Last week, JBS, which sells beef and chicken under its Pilgrim’s Pride and Swift labels, said it was closing a packing plant in Greeley, Colorado, where four workers died from the coronavirus, including longtime plant employee Saul Sanchez, 78. Sanchez, a father of six, had worked for more than 30 years at the plant. A daughter, Beatriz Rangel, said Sanchez was willing to work at the plant even during the outbreak because he trusted his employer.
A few days ago the Washington Post ran a lengthy feature story about how the Brazilian-owned meat giant—JBS—was getting federal taxpayer dollars as part of an agricultural bailout from the Trump Administration.
Of course the premise of the story, which featured the obligatory photo of the President, was that Trump was somehow responsible for a foreign-owned company ripping-off the US consumer by consolidating its holdings in America and creating a monopoly.
This is JBS headquarters in Greeley, CO Photo credit: Me! Taken on my 2016 tour of US meatpacking towns that have been changed by refugee labor.
It sure does look like JBS has a growing share of the meat industry.
The Washington Posttells us that JBS’s growth has been rapid following its first purchase of a US meatpacking business in 2007:
In 2007, JBS bought pork and beef producer Swift and Co. In 2008, it purchased the beef operations of Smithfield Foods. In 2009, it acquired poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride. In 2015, JBS bought Cargill’s pork division. And in 2017, the company purchased poultry producer GNP Co.
But in the extremely long and damning expose there is not one word about JBS’s voracious appetite for immigrant labor that includes refugee workers provided to the company by the US State Department’s resettlement contractors!
As longtime readers know I have been interested in the role BIG MEAT plays in changing the character of American towns with its use of low wage immigrant labor since I saw a report in 2008 about how Bill Clinton brought refugeesto Iowa to make his meatpacker pals happy.
Lobbying for labor
And, I need to mention that thenSenator Jeff Sessions fingered meatpackersin the lobbying gang pushing for that ‘Gang of Eight’ so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that passed the Senate in 2013.
As I had reported at the time, the refugee resettlement contractors were also pushing for passage of the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty bill that ultimately failed to make it through the House of Representatives.
Lutherans were being paid to find refugee labor for JBS!
Then I got the shock! I had always assumed that it was just happenstance that some of the nine refugee resettlement contractors hired by the US State Department to place refugees in US towns and cities had a casual relationship with industries looking for cheap and compliant labor, but I never dreamed there was a direct financial connection until this news broke in 2017.
(LOL! as I write this I sure am glad RRW has been recovered.There is a lot of history filed here!)
Foreign-owned Big Meat hires Lutherans to help them find and retain refugee labor
That is the crux of this story and not in my wildest dreams did I think that money was directly changing hands between the meat industry and a federal refugee contractor, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore, MD.
LIRS is headquartered here in Baltimore. This is their own description: The Lutheran Center (LIRS headquarters) is a six-story structure constructed in 1999 on property owned by Baltimore’s historic Christ Lutheran Church. The building is located near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the historic Federal Hill neighborhood, a charming area rich with history and an eclectic array of eateries and shopping venues.
I always assumed it was an informal relationship where the largely federally-funded ‘religious’ charity (LIRS is 96% funded by you and not via the collection plate) just happened to be bringing immigrant workers to small town America.
Now we learn that there is a formal (secret!), contractual arrangement planned for pilot projects in four states with JBS USA a Brazilian-owned company. And, it makes me wonder if this isn’t new and whether similar arrangements are being made with others of the nine federal refugee contractors.
The four states targeted for pilot projects in 2017 were Georgia, Texas, Iowa and Michigan.
Read it all! An insider at LIRS had revealed internal documents obtained by Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily.
To make a long story short:
A foreign company buys up major meat producing companies in the US then lobbies for and obtains refugee laborers with the help of a fake ‘religious’ charity funded largely by you, the taxpayers.
The immigrant laborers aren’t paid decent wages so they depend on welfare to make ends meet all the while disrupting the social and cultural make-up of small US towns and cities.
And, you, the US taxpayers, are paying for it all as they change America, one small town at a time.
Someone should write a book!
Heck, a lot of the research is done already! See my enormous archive on Meatpackers here.
A week ago it was Cargill in Ft. Morgan, CO recalling beef that was believed to be responsible for at least one death and scores of illnesses from E.Coli. (See here that a Tennessee family is suing Cargill!).
We recently told you about Cargill herewhen they settled a religious discrimination suit with Somali refugee workers.
JBS Swift is headquartered in Greeley, CO. I took this photo in the summer of 2016 on my tour of refugee-overloaded towns. See here how worried JBS was when Trump lowered the refugee cap. Big Meat braces for refugee shortage: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2017/02/09/bloomberg-trumps-refugee-ceiling-of-50000-could-hurt-big-meat/
This week it is JBS Swift headquartered in Greeley, CO that is recalling even more than Cargill.
Both JBS and Cargill hire extensively from the refugee population with the help of the nine federal resettlement contractors*** and the US State Department.
JBS in massive beef recall over 16-state Salmonella outbreak with 57 illnesses
Raw ground beef is the probable source of a new 16-state Salmonella outbreak involving 57 illnesses, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Thursday, along with a massive recall.
The recall is for more than 6.5 million pounds of beef products from JBS Tolleson Inc. in Tolleson, AZ. The traceback investigation by FSIS, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health and agriculture agencies have identified JBS as the common supplier of the various raw, non-intact beef products.
[….]
Consumption of food contaminated with Salmonella can cause salmonellosis, one of the most common bacterial foodborne illnesses. The most common symptoms of salmonellosis are diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever within 12 to 72 hours after eating the contaminated product. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days. Most people recover without treatment. In some persons, however, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to be hospitalized. Older adults, infants, and persons with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop a severe illness. Individuals concerned about an illness should contact their health care provider.
[….]
Greeley, CO-based JBS USA is the American food processing company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s largest beef producer.
***Don’t miss this 2017 post! Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is one of the nine federally funded resettlement contractors.
Foreign-owned Big Meat hires Lutherans to help them find and retain refugee labor
That is the crux of this story and not in my wildest dreams did I think that money was directly changing hands between the meat industry and a federal refugee contractor, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore, MD.
