Bernice Yeung

Bernice Yeung was a California-based reporter for ProPublica. In 2020, she was a member of a team of journalists who covered the impact of COVID-19 on meatpacking workers, which was honored with a Polk Award, a Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing Award, and a National Institute for Health Care Management Award.

Previously, she was a reporter with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, where she was a member of the national Emmy-nominated Rape in the Fields reporting team, which investigated the sexual assault of immigrant farmworkers. The project won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Yeung also was the lead reporter for the national Emmy-nominated Rape on the Night Shift team, which examined sexual violence against female janitors. That work won an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative journalism, and the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. Those projects led to her first book, In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America's Most Vulnerable Workers (The New Press, 2018), which was honored with the PEN America/John Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

When Dangerous Strains of Salmonella Hit, the Turkey Industry Responded Forcefully. The Chicken Industry? Not So Much.

Consolidation in the poultry industry may be fueling widespread salmonella outbreaks. Turkey companies worked with researchers to eradicate one. So why can’t the chicken industry do the same?

Your Free-Range Organic Chicken May Have Been Processed at a Large Industrial Poultry Plant

To help us make sense of the opaque poultry supply chain, hundreds of ProPublica readers sent in details about their chickens and turkeys. Here’s what we learned.

The Low-and-Slow Approach to Food Safety Reform Keeps Going Up in Smoke

The U.S. has one agency that regulates cheese pizza and another that oversees pepperoni pizza. Efforts to fix the food safety system have stalled again and again.

America’s Food Safety System Failed to Stop a Salmonella Epidemic. It’s Still Making People Sick.

For years, a dangerous salmonella strain has sickened thousands and continues to spread through the chicken industry. The USDA knows about it. So do the companies. And yet, contaminated meat continues to be sold to consumers.

Look Up the Salmonella Rates Where Your Poultry Was Processed

How worried should you be about salmonella in your chicken or turkey? Chicken Checker lets you look up where it was processed and find out.

After Hundreds of Meatpacking Workers Died From COVID-19, Congress Wants Answers

A key House subcommittee cited reports by ProPublica and other news outlets in launching an investigation into how the country’s meatpacking companies handled the pandemic, which has killed hundreds of workers to date.

How the History of Waterloo, Iowa, Explains How Meatpacking Plants Became Hotbeds of COVID-19

Waterloo was the site of a historic battle for labor rights and racial justice. But as the meatpacking industry changed, the workforce lost its power and was primed for an outbreak. This is how we got here.

As COVID-19 Ravaged This Iowa City, Officials Discovered Meatpacking Executives Were the Ones in Charge

Meatpacking was once a path to the middle class in Waterloo, where workers led the fight for civil rights. But by the time the pandemic hit, a transformed industry had assembled a workforce from the most vulnerable parts of the world. The stage had been set.

Correos electrónicos muestran que la industria empacadora de carnes redactó el borrador de una orden ejecutiva para que las plantas permanecieran abiertas

Cientos de correos electrónicos ofrecen un vistazo excepcional del acceso que tiene la industria de la carne a los más altos niveles del gobierno, así como de la influencia que esta industria ejerce sobre ellos. El borrador fue presentado una semana antes de que se dictara la orden ejecutiva de Trump, la cual incluyó semejanzas notables.

Emails Show the Meatpacking Industry Drafted an Executive Order to Keep Plants Open

Hundreds of emails offer a rare look at the meat industry’s influence and access to the highest levels of government. The draft was submitted a week before Trump’s executive order, which bore striking similarities.

Las empresas empacadoras de carne ignoraron las advertencias durante años, pero ahora dicen que nadie habría podido prepararse para COVID-19

En documentos que se remontan hasta 2006, funcionarios gubernamentales pronosticaron que una pandemia pondría en peligro a las empresas imprescindibles y les advirtieron que se prepararan. Las empresas empacadoras de carne los ignoraron en gran medida, y ahora casi todos esos pronósticos se han vuelto realidad.

Meatpacking Companies Dismissed Years of Warnings but Now Say Nobody Could Have Prepared for COVID-19

In documents dating to 2006, government officials predicted that a pandemic would threaten critical businesses and warned them to prepare. Meatpacking companies largely ignored them, and now nearly every one of the predictions has come true.

They Warned OSHA They Were in “Imminent Danger” at the Meat Plant. Now They’re Suing the Agency.

The suit by workers at Maid-Rite Speciality Foods in Pennsylvania employs a rarely used legal tool and is the latest in a growing chorus of complaints about how the federal agency charged with protecting workers has responded to COVID-19.

Emails Reveal Chaos as Meatpacking Companies Fought Health Agencies Over COVID-19 Outbreaks in Their Plants

Thousands of pages of documents obtained by ProPublica show how quickly public health agencies were overwhelmed by meatpacking cases. One CEO described social distancing as “a nicety that makes sense only for people with laptops.”

She Paid Thousands for a Visa to Work in the U.S. Then She Got Laid Off. Now, She’s Trapped.

Thousands of workers in the U.S. with J-1 visas have been laid off as the coronavirus shut down the economy. They can’t afford to fly to their home countries — and can’t afford to stay.

“Similar to Times of War”: The Staggering Toll of COVID-19 on Filipino Health Care Workers

One of every four Filipinos in the New York-New Jersey area is employed in the health care industry. With at least 30 worker deaths and many more family members lost to the coronavirus, a community at the epicenter of the pandemic has been left reeling.

Millions of Essential Workers Are Being Left Out of COVID-19 Workplace Safety Protections, Thanks to OSHA

Even as the federal worker-safety agency has been inundated with complaints, it has rolled back safety standards and virtually eliminated non-health care workplaces from government protection.

“I’m Terrified”: Pregnant Health Care Workers at Risk for Coronavirus Are Being Forced to Keep Working

Pregnant doctors, nurses and medical support staff have continued going to work, whether they want to or not, even as the latest research on coronavirus and pregnancy has caused a new sense of worry.

Austin Police Department Orders Deeper Investigation After Audit Finds It Misclassified Cleared Rape Cases

The APD will ask a third party to examine how it handles rape investigations. The police chief also announced he had ordered other changes, including the addition of another supervisor to the sex crimes unit and new policies for clearing crimes.

Audit Finds Austin, Texas, Improperly Cleared Rapes

A review prompted by an investigation by Newsy, Reveal and ProPublica shows that the Police Department misclassified cases in a way that made its rate of solving them appear higher.

Follow ProPublica

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Why It’s So Hard to Find a Therapist Who Takes Insurance

DOJ Files Antitrust Suit Against RealPage, Maker of Rent-Setting Algorithm

A 10-Year-Old Pointed a Finger Gun. The Principal Kicked Him Out of His Tennessee School for a Year.

This College’s 38-Acre Land Donation to a Christian School Drew Little Attention. Experts Say It Appears to Violate the Law.