Three workers inhaled a toxic industrial chemical at a Simmons Prepared Foods plant, the company got caught covering it up in federal paperwork, and the U.S. EPA’s punishment was: upgrade your sticker.

The Day the Ammonia Cloud Came

On July 1, 2023, at Simmons Prepared Foods’ facility at 2101 Twin Circle Drive in Van Buren, Arkansas, a process malfunction released 1,600 pounds of anhydrous ammonia directly into the air. Three employees were exposed to the gas. The EPA’s own documentation confirms the cause: Simmons failed to use a “robust tag-out/lock-out mechanism” that could have prevented the entire incident.

Anhydrous ammonia is not a minor industrial nuisance. At the concentrations achievable from a 1,600-pound release in an enclosed or semi-enclosed processing environment, it causes immediate burning of the eyes, nose, throat, and lungs, and can cause permanent respiratory damage or death at high enough exposure. The federal government classifies it as a regulated substance under the Clean Air Act precisely because accidental releases are known to “cause or may reasonably be anticipated to cause death, injury, or serious adverse effects to human health or the environment.”

Simmons did not just fail to prevent the release. According to the EPA’s findings, the company also violated federal law by failing to update its five-year accident history in its Risk Management Plan (RMP), the very document designed to ensure regulators and emergency responders know about past chemical incidents at a facility.

What 110 Million Pounds of Chicken Looks Like Next to a $0 Fine

Simmons Prepared Foods operates three production lines at this single Van Buren facility and produces approximately 110 million pounds of fully cooked chicken products every year. To visualize that: if every pound of chicken were a dollar bill, Simmons would be stacking $110 million ($110 million, enough to pay the annual salaries of over 2,000 registered nurses) from this one plant annually. The EPA issued zero dollars in financial penalties. Not a cent.

The compliance order imposes only two requirements: update the lock-out/tag-out sticker to one with “more robust adhesion,” and add the incident to the company’s accident history paperwork. These are actions Simmons should have taken before the release ever happened, and in the case of the paperwork, actions the law already required after the release happened. The EPA is asking them to follow rules they already broke, and calling that justice.

The Non-Financial Ledger

There are three people in this story who have no names. The EPA’s 15-page Administrative Order on Consent refers to them only as “three (3) employees.” We know they showed up to work at a chicken processing plant in Van Buren, Arkansas. We know they were exposed to 1,600 pounds of anhydrous ammonia. We know the federal government filed paperwork about what happened to them. And we know the government’s paperwork never once asked whether they were okay.

Anhydrous ammonia exposure causes immediate physical trauma. Even brief inhalation at moderate concentrations causes a burning sensation in the nose, throat, and airways. Higher concentrations cause pulmonary edema, where the lungs fill with fluid, chemical burns to the skin and eyes, and in severe cases, respiratory failure. The EPA document does not describe the severity of the three workers’ exposures. It does not say whether they went to the hospital. It does not say whether any of them have permanent lung damage. It does not say whether they were given sick leave, workers’ comp, or any support at all. The law required the company to protect them, the company failed, and the record the government built in response treats their suffering as a data point: three.

What the document does tell us is this: the failure that exposed these workers was entirely preventable. Lock-out/tag-out (LOTO) procedures are among the most basic, well-established worker safety practices in industrial settings. OSHA has required them for decades. The idea is simple: before anyone works on or near machinery or equipment that handles hazardous materials, the equipment gets physically locked and tagged so nobody can accidentally activate it. Simmons Prepared Foods, a company producing 110 million pounds of product per year (110 million pounds, enough to fill roughly 110 Olympic swimming pools with cooked chicken) from this one facility, failed to implement this basic protection. The EPA’s own order states directly that a “robust tag-out/lock-out mechanism… could have prevented the injury and release.”

The betrayal embedded in this story runs deeper than one incident. Federal law requires companies handling dangerous chemicals above certain thresholds to maintain a Risk Management Plan: a document that tracks accident history, prevention protocols, and emergency response procedures. Simmons failed to include this incident in that five-year accident history record. That means the system designed to warn regulators, emergency responders, and the surrounding community about chemical hazards at this facility was quietly left incomplete. The workers who got hurt had their story written out of the official record, at least until the EPA came asking seven months later. That is how disposable the bodies of working-class people are to this industry.

Van Buren, Arkansas is a small city of roughly 25,000 people. The Simmons facility sits at 2101 Twin Circle Drive, a processing plant that operates three production lines and employs an unknown number of workers from the local community. These are not abstract numbers. They are people who live in Van Buren, who shop at its grocery stores, whose kids go to its schools, and who go to work each day trusting that their employer has followed basic safety rules. That trust was broken on July 1, 2023, and the federal government’s response was to send a strongly worded letter with a $0 fine attached.

The stipulated penalties in the compliance order, the fines Simmons would owe only if it ignores even the toothless requirements to fix a sticker and update a spreadsheet, max out at $1,000 per day ($1,000 per day, roughly what a minimum-wage worker earns in a full week) for the first 30 days of noncompliance, and $2,500 per day ($2,500 per day, about what an average American household spends on groceries in three months) after that. Simmons processes approximately 301,370 pounds of chicken per day at this facility. At their standard market rate, the daily $1,000 fine represents a rounding error. The financial pressure on Simmons to actually comply is effectively zero.

Legal Receipts: Straight From the Document

These are direct quotes and findings from the EPA’s Administrative Order on Consent. Every word below comes from the official federal document.

Societal Impact Mapping

Workers Are the Sacrifice Zone

Anhydrous ammonia is listed as a regulated substance under the Clean Air Act specifically because federal regulators know it causes serious physical harm when accidentally released. The threshold quantity that triggers federal oversight is 10,000 pounds. Simmons stored more than that threshold at this facility, meaning the entire Risk Management Program framework existed precisely because the government recognized the danger these workers faced every single day. The system knew. The rules existed. And the company still failed to implement a basic lock-out/tag-out procedure.

The three exposed workers represent the direct, documented public health harm in this case. But the failure to update the five-year accident history in the Risk Management Plan compounds the risk for every future worker and every future emergency responder who might need to act at this facility. Emergency response to chemical incidents depends on accurate historical data. When that data gets buried, first responders walk into situations without the full picture of what they’re dealing with. The cover-up of the paperwork is a public health violation layered on top of the original safety violation.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) process safety management standard, cited directly in the EPA order, exists to protect workers in exactly this kind of environment. Simmons operates under NAICS code 311615, Poultry Processing, an industry with documented rates of serious workplace injuries. Poultry processing workers are among the most vulnerable in the American labor force: many are immigrants, many are low-income, and most have very limited power to push back against unsafe conditions without risking their jobs. The failure to protect these three workers is one incident in an industry where the power imbalance between employer and employee is extreme.

The Fine That Wasn’t: Who Really Pays Here?

The EPA had real enforcement tools available. The order itself acknowledges that under Section 113 of the Clean Air Act, the agency has authority to pursue civil penalties of up to $101,439 ($101,439, more than most American workers earn in two full years of full-time employment) per day of violation. For civil judicial enforcement. For every day Simmons was out of compliance with its Risk Management Plan reporting requirements alone. The EPA chose not to pursue a single dollar of that.

Simmons Prepared Foods produces 110 million pounds of cooked chicken per year from this one facility (110 million pounds, enough chicken to give every person in Arkansas roughly 36 pounds each, every year, from one plant). The financial disparity between the company’s production scale and the consequences it faced for exposing workers to toxic gas and falsifying safety records is stark. A fine of zero dollars does nothing to change the economic calculus for Simmons or any other industrial operator. The message the settlement sends is that the cost of skipping safety procedures is lower than the cost of implementing them.

For the workers themselves, the economic injury compounds the physical one. Workers in poultry processing plants typically earn near-minimum wage, often in rural areas with limited alternative employment. If any of the three exposed workers suffered lasting respiratory damage, their ability to continue working in a physically demanding environment is directly threatened. The company faces no financial accountability for that. Any workers’ compensation claims come out of insurance systems, not Simmons’ direct liability under this order. The order explicitly does not resolve civil or criminal claims, but zero financial penalty signals to the workforce that the EPA’s bite matches its bark.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now?

The EPA named specific contacts on this order. Simmons Prepared Foods employees are listed in the order under corporate email domains at simfoods.com. The regulatory bodies with jurisdiction over this situation and the ongoing risks at this facility are listed below. Use them.

Who Holds the Power Here

• EPA Region 6 Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division (Dallas, TX): The office that issued this order and has authority to pursue further penalties if Simmons fails to comply.
• OSHA: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforces lock-out/tag-out requirements independently of the EPA. This incident may warrant a separate OSHA investigation and penalty assessment.
• EPA Risk Management Program: Submit public comments or requests for inspection through EPA’s RMP reporting portal. The public has a right to know what chemicals facilities in their communities store and how those facilities have handled accidents.
• Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing: State-level labor enforcement with jurisdiction over working conditions at the Van Buren facility.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): Workers at the facility have the legal right to organize around safety conditions without retaliation. The NLRB enforces that right.

Named in the Order

Respondent contacts listed in the EPA order: Bailey Nash (Bailey.Nash@simfoods.com) and Nelson Jackson (Nelson.Jackson@simfoods.com). EPA enforcement contact: Carlos Flores, Waste and Chemical Enforcement Branch, Region 6.

What You Can Actually Do

If you work in food processing, agriculture, or any industrial facility that uses hazardous chemicals, connect with your coworkers and learn your OSHA rights around process safety. Local unions and labor organizing groups can walk you through the process of requesting OSHA inspections without fear of retaliation. The right to a safe workplace is a federal right, and it costs Simmons nothing when workers don’t know that. Organizations like the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) specifically support food processing workers. Talk to them. The workers who inhaled ammonia on July 1, 2023 deserved better from their employer, from the EPA, and from a system that logged their suffering as “three employees” and moved on.