Understanding the Communicative Conditions of Meatpacking Labor Exploitation amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

In April 2020, as cases of COVID-19 raced through meatpacking plants, Tyson Foods released the ad, “A Delicate Balance: Feeding the Nation and Keeping our Employees Healthy.” Written as a public plea, it presents a dire warning of food supply collapse if plants were forced to interrupt production. As outbreaks among meatpacking workers spread and public scrutiny increased, Smithfield released a full-page ad equating their workers to heroic gladiators. These “disastertisements” (Mull, 2020) rearticulate meat consumption with worker solidarity, deflecting criticism and maintaining market power through an unfolding economic crisis.

As a form of issues management by which an organization strategically communicates a policy position vis-à-vis its business interests, marketplace advocacy “promot[es] the role of a business in society and its contribution to…economic health and prosperity” (Miller & Lellis, 2016, p. 251). Through this form of public messaging, companies can confront barriers to their industry, assuage culpability or atone for corporate wrongdoing, as well as influence audience/consumer perception and public policy. Extant research largely studies post-controversy communication via message testing (Lee, Haley, & Yang, 2013; Miller, Gaither, & Gaither, 2016; Miller & Lellis, 2016). Using marketplace advocacy as a theoretical frame, we examine a set of newspaper and television ads featuring plant workers disseminated by Tyson, JBS, and Smithfield throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Thematic analysis reveals how the American work ethic and food supply stewardship are taken up as marketplace advocacy appeals, obscuring abuses of worker health and safety and solidifying these corporations’ dominance in the global food system.