August 21, 2020

Smithfield Foods withdraws lawsuit against OSHA

 

Smithfield Foods has withdrawn its lawsuit against the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which had asked to be given access to the information that the company submitted to the South Dakota Department of Health (DOH) related to an outbreak of COVID-19 at its Sioux Falls plant in that state last April.

The company, which is the world's largest pork processor and hog producer, filed a motion for dismissal before the US District Court for South Dakota's Southern District after both parties, it said, reached an agreement with respect to the issues raised in Smithfield's initial motion to quash, The Smithfield Times reported on Tuesday, Aug. 18.

It was reported that, based on court documents, Smithfield had argued that some of the information sought by OSHA, which is tasked with enforcing standards for safe working conditions, were in violation of its employees' right to privacy and the company's right to due process.

"The Company views this as an attempt to end-run OSHA's standard investigative process and associated procedural safeguards, and obtain from a third party what it could not obtain through a standard investigation", the firm's hired law firm Hutton Andrews Kurth said in a letter sent to OSHA.

"In effect, the Subpoena [of OSHA to the DOH] takes advantage of Smithfield's voluntary cooperation with DOH by using the information disclosed for scientific and public health purposes against Smithfield in an adversarial context", it added.

In withdrawing the lawsuit, the company, through Smithfield's executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance, Keira Lombardo, said: "We are pleased to have reached a resolution with OSHA whereby all necessary documentation requested has been provided and, at the same time, private employee medical and confidential business information will be protected from disclosure to the public and/or will not be made available to our competitors".

"We were simply asking for the opportunity to review these documents to flag such issues and, if our concerns were validated, require that production include confidentiality safeguards. Our employees in Sioux Falls have already experienced discrimination in the community amid the pandemic, and we take our responsibility to protect their private health information seriously."

Smithfield Foods is headquartered in Smithfield, Virginia, with 40,000 US employees.