Trump Wanted Meatpacking Plants To Run Faster. Biden Is Slowing Them Down.
Former President Donald Trump helped meatpacking companies speed up the production lines inside their plants to process more animals, despite worries it could lead to more injuries for workers. But so far, the Biden administration has delivered a very different message: Not so fast.
The pork industry suffered a setback this week when President Joe Biden’s Agriculture Department said it would comply with a court ruling invalidating key parts of a Trump-era meatpacking rule. As a result, some pork facilities will have to back down the speed of their lines.
The Trump rule had allowed certain plants to jack up their speeds above the traditional cap of 1,106 hogs per hour. But a federal judge in Minnesota ruled in March that USDA officials under Trump instituted that rule in an “arbitrary” and “capricious” manner, failing to take worker safety into account. The judge gave hog processors and the USDA 90 days to sort things out.
The pork industry lobby asked the Biden administration to appeal the ruling, arguing it would hurt meat production to slow the plants. But it now appears unlikely the administration will do that.
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/biden-administration-meatpacking-slow-production-lines-170304767.html