"Meatpacking giant JBS gave $5 million; industry soon celebrated a decision to make those on the assembly line work faster."

"The largest single donor to Donald Trump’s inauguration was Pilgrim’s Pride, a poultry processor that contributed $5 million to the Jan. 20 festivities, more than the combined donations of Meta, Amazon and Apple. And in the first quarter of 2025, its parent company spent more than $500,000 lobbying the administration, doubling its expenditures compared to the same period last year.

Since then, the processor and its parent company, Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS, have benefited from several major policy decisions by the Trump administration. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted its approval for JBS to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, which was celebrated by the company’s global chief executive officer, Gilberto Tomazoni, as a moment that would start a “new chapter in our trajectory” by improving capital access and its long-term growth prospects.

A month later, the Department of Agriculture announced that it would allow meat processing facilities like those of Pilgrim’s Pride to accelerate their line speeds — the rate at which workers process meat and poultry — a long-sought goal of the industry. The agency said research has found no direct link between processing speeds and workplace injuries, even though some studies have indeed shown that faster line speeds would increase health risks. In addition, the agency said it would no longer require plants to submit worker safety data it considered “redundant.”"

Marcus Baram reports for Capital & Main January 7, 2026. [2]