Author

Bernice Yeung

Bernice Yeung covers business with a focus on labor and employment for ProPublica. Previously, she was a reporter with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting where her work examined issues related to violence against women, immigration, environmental health and the workplace.

Meatpacking companies dismissed years of warnings but now say nobody could have prepared for COVID-19

By: Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung - August 21, 2020

This story was originally published by investigative reporting nonprofit ProPublica. At the end of June, with hundreds of his workers already infected with COVID-19 and several dead, Kenneth Sullivan, the CEO of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, sent a pointed letter to two U.S. senators who had launched an investigation into outbreaks in […]

Emails reveal chaos as meatpacking companies fought health agencies over COVID-19 outbreaks in their plants

By: Michael Grabell, Bernice Yeung and Claire Perlman - June 22, 2020

For weeks, Rachel Willard, the county health director in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, had watched with alarm as COVID-19 cases rolled in from the Tyson Foods chicken plant in the center of town. Then Tyson hired a private company to take over testing, and the information suddenly slowed to a trickle. Blinded to the burgeoning health […]

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