Former USDA official defends pandemic efforts to keep meatpacking plants open

In 2020, industry representatives communicated frequently with senior federal officials leading the USDA and its Food Safety and Inspection Service, the agency charged with overseeing the plants.

Aside from Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, perhaps no other person has been more central to the department’s efforts to keep plants running than FSIS chief Mindy Brashears.

One Tyson Foods executive said that if his plants continue to face pressure to close, “we may have to bring in Mindy.” Brashears “hasn’t lost a fight for us,” another industry executive said in an internal email. In short, it was the “fixer-in-chief” of the meat industry, a congressional subcommittee concluded in a May report.

Like other high-ranking USDA officials, Brashears has remained largely silent on the USDA’s efforts to keep meatpackers operating. Through his current employer, the University of Georgia System, Perdue declined several opportunities to speak with Investigate Midwest about his time at the USDA.

But in exclusive interviews with Investigate Midwest, Brashears, 52, defended her actions. Her tenure at FSIS — revealed in tens of thousands of emails obtained by Congress, thousands more that Public Citizen sued to collect and numerous news stories — has been mischaracterized, she said.

For example, she stepped in when a California plant that would have been linked to eight deaths from COVID-19 faced closure. The congressional report did not note why the shutdown time was needed. She said if the workers left immediately, the plant’s product could spoil.

“When the congressional report came out, I mean, I’m not going to say it was false. It was completely misrepresented,” she said. “They called me ‘the fixer.’ I was like, “Oh my God.” I guess I’ve been called worse.

Another problem with the report, she explained, is that it doesn’t show that she “reports” to industry leaders. That undermines confidence in it and the overall conclusions, she said.

Brashears’ ties to the meat industry are extensive. Before joining the USDA, for example, she was paid $100,000 for her work during a trial to dismiss an ABC News story calling the company’s meat product “pink slime,” according to the Texas Observer. She readily admitted she was friends with industry lobbyists.

But in her narrative she provided effective oversight of an industry in crisis. Although Congress found the industry’s claims of a meat shortage likely to be exaggerated, Brashears said she was focused on keeping food on the tables of Americans.

“Food security is a matter of national security,” she said. “Industry did email me and other undersecretaries. We all worked together and communicated that way. But what was happening was. . . we’ll get on the phone and say, “Okay, what resources do you need?”

Her work has focused on providing hand sanitizer, tests and masks to plants at a time when demand far outstrips supply, she said.

Some — including the former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, David Michaels — called on the USDA to take the lead in worker safety, as it had inspectors at every major plant in the country on a daily basis. But worker safety was not her job, Brashears said.

“I had no regulatory jurisdiction over worker safety. There were, you know, requests. People were asking, “Why aren’t inspectors looking for worker safety?” Well, they’re not trained to do that.

“We were trying to make sure everyone was talking and communicating and getting the resources they needed,” she continued. “Because going back to our staff that were in the plants, we wanted them to be safe.”

After the report was released, Brashears said she and her colleagues at Texas Tech University, where she now teaches, have been threatened.

“They called me all kinds of names and scared us to death,” she said. “It was very hard.”

A Texas Tech police incident report indicated “unsolicited communications” at the university’s administration building, but a university spokesman would not provide further details when asked. Brashears also declined to describe the incident further, citing the police investigation.

Brashears said she was blindsided by the congressional report because she was not interviewed for it.

“They never contacted me, never emailed me,” she said. “I would be more than happy to clarify anything. I’ve never been asked, which baffles me.”

The subcommittee had “sufficient contemporary evidence” of Brashears’ actions, a spokesman said.

“The voluminous evidence cited in the report, more than 150,000 pages, from both government and industry sources, speaks for itself,” the subcommittee spokesperson said in an email to Investigate Midwest. “The launch of this investigation was public and we held a public hearing about the appalling conditions in the meat processing plants, but Dr. Brashears did not contact (the subcommittee) to share his experience.”

A major criticism of the Trump administration in 2020 was that it did very little to prevent meatpacking workers from contracting the virus. OSHA began conducting remote worker safety inspections, which a government watchdog later found likely led to more dangerous environments for workers.

The USDA has also drawn attention for its role. Brashears and Loren Swat, OSHA’s head at the time, waited months after the pandemic began to begin coordinating, even though both had oversight of meat processing plants.

The Department of Agriculture’s regulation of meat processing plants can be complicated, said Jordan Barab, a senior official at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under former President Obama. OSHA shares oversight of many meat processing plants with FSIS.

Senior USDA officials are often tied to the agriculture industry, Barab said. This can be difficult, as the department is tasked with both protecting the industry’s interests and regulating its operations.

In his experience, Barab said, Republican administrations like Trump’s discourage government interference in business.

“Obviously,” he said, “you have an ideology that discourages any kind of enforcement or anything that could be perceived as hostile to employers.”

Mark Lauritsen saw the ideology played out on the ground. He is the international vice president and head of the meatpacking division for the United Food and Commercial Workers, the union that represents many meatpacking workers across the country.