The number of complaints about meat processing plants is higher than any other single industry in the state, making up 6.6% of all valid complaints since the start of the pandemic, despite these workers making up less than 1% of North Carolina's workforce in May 2019. Deborah Berkowitz, a former senior policy adviser for OSHA and now worker safety and health program director at the National Law Employment Project, told NPR this month that OSHA on the federal level closed around 12,000 worker complaints out of 18,000 complaints to state OSHA departments.