Dozens of U.S. meat-processing plants have been forced to close temporarily as the industry struggles to contain the spread of the coronavirus among employees who often stand side-by-side while cutting and packaging beef, pork and poultry. https://t.co/rNf7I4hhLJ
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 23, 2020
A rash of coronavirus outbreaks at dozens of meat packing plants across the nation is far more extensive than previously thought.
And it could get worse. https://t.co/X6pYcTRz0C
— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) April 22, 2020
… when Upton Sinclair published The Jungle. Efficiently chopping up carcasses is inherently messy & potentially dangerous; doing so at the greatest profit *to factory owners* is predictably dangerous, and not only for the workers. The DesMoines Register published this almost a week ago:
A rash of coronavirus outbreaks at dozens of meat packing plants across the nation is far more extensive than previously thought, according to an exclusive review of cases by USA TODAY and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
And it could get worse. More than 150 of America’s largest meat processing plants operate in counties where the rate of coronavirus infection is already among the nation’s highest, based on the media outlets’ analysis of slaughterhouse locations and county-level COVID-19 infection rates.
These facilities represent more than 1 in 3 of the nation’s biggest beef, pork and poultry processing plants. Rates of infection around these plants are higher than those of 75% of other U.S. counties, the analysis found…
As companies scramble to contain the outbreaks by closing more than a dozen U.S. plants so far — including a Smithfield pork plant in South Dakota that handles 5% of U.S. pork production — the crisis has raised the specter of mass meat shortages.
But experts say there’s little risk of a dwindling protein supply because, given the choice between worker safety and keeping meat on grocery shelves, the nation’s slaughterhouses will choose to produce food.…
The meat packing industry was already notorious for poor working conditions even before the coronavirus pandemic. Meat and poultry employees have among the highest illness rates of all manufacturing employees and are less likely to report injuries and illness than any other type of worker, federal watchdog reports have found.
And the plants have been called out numerous times for refusing to let their employees use the bathroom, even to wash their hands — one of the biggest ways to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Amplifying the danger is that, in many places, meat processing companies are largely on their own to ensure an outbreak doesn’t spread across their factory floors.
Factory workers, unions, and even managers say the federal government — including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — has done little more than issue non-enforceable guidance. On its website, for example, the CDC has released safety guidelines for critical workers and businesses, which primarily promote common sense measures of sanitization and personal distancing…
But rather than increase safety and oversight, the U.S. Department of Agriculture relaxed it in the midst of the pandemic. Just this month, the agency allowed 15 poultry plants to exceed federal limits on how many birds workers can process in a minute.
That’s more than in any previous month in the waiver program’s history. Several worker protection agencies have found that increasing line speeds causes more injuries.
And it could lead to more infections, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union said in a statement: “These waivers guarantee that workers are more crowded along a meatpacking line and more workers are put at risk of either catching or spreading the virus.”
Most of the plants that received waivers are owned by Tyson Foods and Wayne Farms, according to a department record. One of them — a Wayne Farms facility in Albertville, Alabama — disclosed this week that 75 of its workers tested positive and one died. The plant will slow production to improve safety, it told AL.com…
Seems like Tyson found a more cost-effective (for them) alternative — buy a full-page ad in the NYTimes:
Tyson Foods didn’t mince words in a full page @nytimes ad Sunday, warning, “the food supply chain is breaking.”
“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close…millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” John Tyson wrote. pic.twitter.com/0jJxrMOngw
— Mosheh Oinounou (@Mosheh) April 27, 2020
Capitalism is Tyson running an expensive full-page ad not-subtly asking to be bailed out next to the second half of a story about how they failed to provide their workforce with protective equipment. pic.twitter.com/Yifr9LRoFo
— Mass for Shut-ins (is a podcast) (@edburmila) April 27, 2020
Free (‘earned’) media ensues!
Tyson Foods is warning that "millions of pounds of meat" will disappear from the supply chain as the coronavirus pandemic pushes food processing plants to close, leading to product shortages in grocery stores across the country. https://t.co/3Mt8GvkjhK
— CNN (@CNN) April 27, 2020
Counter argument:
But while plant closures may lead to temporary meat shortages, the system is not likely to break down—despite the severity of current challenges.@JessTiaFu and @hclaire_brown explain why here: https://t.co/ITRSamRXhm 3/ pic.twitter.com/2RzhMW3XKw
— The Counter (@TheCounter) April 27, 2020
Right now, there is no lack of animals to process. With plants closed, farmers and ranchers have fewer markets to sell into—so the slaughterhouses that remain open are likely to see supply gluts. 7/
— The Counter (@TheCounter) April 27, 2020
It’s distressing to see big meatpackers in flux, because just 4 of them dominate 80% of the supply chain. But they’re not the *entire* supply chain. Hangups at the largest, most crowded plants don’t mean the whole system is in trouble.
11/— The Counter (@TheCounter) April 27, 2020
When it comes to bailouts, Tyson Foods has the competitive advantage of being based in Arkansas. Smithfield is a wholly-owned subsidary of a Chinese multinational, and JBS is based in Brazil. Which is why, one presumes, Smithfield chose to keep a lower profile when COVID-19 infections exploded at their plants…
Economics shapes epidemiology: “A pork plant that saw a coronavirus outbreak offered bonuses to employees who didn’t miss work.”
Nearly 800 workers from that plant were infected with covid-19. https://t.co/gXFm5p3NWK
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) April 24, 2020
(Elsewhere, Smithfield spokespersons cited North Dakota’s governor to explain to Buzzfeed that it was all the fault of filthy immigrants living in crowded conditions with their teeming families — something else that hasn’t changed since 1906.)
Brazil JBS workers catch COVID-19 in latest meat plant outbreak https://t.co/BV3uH7d4Cb pic.twitter.com/xmBJGtGZfh
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 25, 2020
“Former OSHA Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor”:
Stunning. JBS,Smithfield, Tyson’s- failed to provide protections to meat workers from COVId 19 and now 3300 are sick and 17 have died. This Administration let this happen- no mandates. Not acceptable. Horrible.https://t.co/efTLfb5lql
— Debbie Berkowitz (@DebbieBerkowitz) April 25, 2020
Giant meat companies can not be allowed to sacrifice workers lives and health for profit. Covid 19 is spreading in meat plants and sickening and killing workers. Bravo to the workers to stand up for their rights and lives.
— Debbie Berkowitz (@DebbieBerkowitz) April 24, 2020
Iowa Republicans asked the Trump administration Monday to help pork producers who may have to euthanize pigs as they deal with meatpacking plant closures linked with COVID-19. https://t.co/I916Rx8IAj
— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) April 28, 2020
Further reading:
?Covid-19 food system map update?
According to my analysis for @FERNnews, 73 meatpacking and processed food plants in the U.S. have confirmed cases of Covid-19. At least 3,581 workers are confirmed sick and at least 17 have died.
Full details here: https://t.co/fsJ66QFcM2 pic.twitter.com/wFTZotW6gG
— Leah Douglas (@leahjdouglas) April 24, 2020
As of today, at least 79 food and meatpacking plants have reported cases of Covid-19, and at least 3,720 workers are sick.
I added 6 plants to the map since Friday, in states like Missouri, Rhode Island, and Colorado.
Full details at @FERNnews: https://t.co/kOeWhGazYE pic.twitter.com/F4ZBVDPAvB
— Leah Douglas (@leahjdouglas) April 27, 2020
rikyrah
We all might become involuntary vegetarians before it’s all said and done.?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Help depopulating herds
we’re gonna pay Chuck Grassley to kill his own pigs
khead
The Jungle is one of my favorite books. A dreary death march for a poor immigrant who has all kinds of terrible things happen to him. Much like the many immigrants who once worked the coal mines in my native southern WV.
hells littlest angel
Tyson: Nice plate of fried chicken you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.
joel hanes
If only there were an organization, somewhere, tasked with ensuring the safety of the work environment.
Or a department of the government specifically chartered to defend the interests of workers in the necessarily-unequal power relationship with their employers.
Or if — bear with me here — if workers could somehow join together in an organization that represented them collectively, so that they might, together, wield some bargaining power that offset the self-interest of capital.
rikyrah
So, nothing about how they are going to protect workers.
Or, how they will be doing ongoing comprehensive testing.
Or, how they will take care of their workers if they get sick.????
Anne Laurie
@rikyrah: Might not be that easy; I’m putting together another post about the much-abused mostly-immigrant workers who pick our produce, too.
One pretty clear consequence of this pandemic is that all food is gonna get more expensive. The silver lining, maybe, is that paying what it costs for ‘clean’ food is gonna reduce the incentives to manufacture addictive ‘junk’ from the off-results of factory production…
rikyrah
Anne Laurie,
I hope that you see this for the morning COVID-19 POST.
Senegal has a $1 testing kit.
Kent
Here in Washington State we were leading the nation in terms of bending the curve back down. Washington started this crisis #1 in both infections and deaths, and then after the initial flood of cases, was doing the best job of tapering things down. One by one 16 other states slowly passed WA by.
Then fucking Tyson Foods out in Eastern Washington MAGA land (tri cities area) exploded with one of these meat plant hot spot outbreaks. A couple of hundred new cases instantly for a plant that employs over 2000. And they still haven’t come close to testing anyone.
WA is still leading the nation in terms of bending the curve downwards, but not quite so much thanks to Tyson. And this was the same exact part of the state where MAGA county commissioners were threatening to defy the governor and open things back up.
My wife is vegan. I think she may have a point.
dmsilev
@joel hanes:
…with Antonin Scalia’s son at its head.
Sigh.
MisterForkbeard
@rikyrah: Nerp. I’m friends with two ranch owners out here. I’m never running out of great beefs, pork and chicken. Lamb, too. :)
NotMax
Good rundown (emphasis added).
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: I;ve got this bookmarked to read later tonight, after I’m done wrestling the draft of an article about our local Board of Health meeting.
Miss Bianca
@joel hanes: That’s just crazy talk!
khead
@rikyrah:
It’s been a month since the first announcement and I am still looking for that $1 test kit. Even the video in the tweet simply says “researchers are developing” the kit.
NotMax
One consequence have not seen much mentioned is what the impact will be on pet foods and what changes, if any, in their formulations will occur.
Kent
Here in the Portland metro, a vulnerable old steakhouse, the Ringside, decided to liquidate its freezers of dry aged steaks to the public at a discount. I guess to keep some cash flow during the closure. So they opened up curbside service to Portlanders wanting discount frozen steak. The line through downtown Portland grew to over a mile long.
People are crazy. Costco sells similar stuff at similar prices:
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/portland-police-respond-to-mile-long-traffic-jam-of-cars-lining-up-to-buy-ringside-steakhouse-meats.html
Patricia Kayden
Kent
By the way, from what I understand of this business, which is a little but not a lot. Beef and pork will basically keep in the field or feed lot. You gotta keep feeding and watering the livestock and there are diminishing returns once they are full grown. But you can keep inventory in the field if a plant is shut down for a few weeks.
Chicken on the other hand, not so much. Much of the industry is designed around processing chicken within a specific size range. And if they get too old and big they can’t make the same fillet products or use the same processing machines. The become “roasters” instead of “fryers” which is a smaller market I guess. Anyway, chicken plants are going to be screwed if they have to keep their chickens for another month.
kindness
Where can I go to start the meme that the Radical Vegans purposefully infected all those meat processing plant employees so we would be FORCED to go vegan.
Those Bastards!
ant
Here in Wisconsin by me, we are side eyeing Brown county right next door to us, wondering what’s going on with the case count numbers.
Green Bay Packerland has more cases than Madison. Meat packing cluster of cases.
Of course county officials wish they could do more testing to find out how much it has spread into the community. No such luck.
Fair Economist
Surprise, surpise. Tyson has been forcing workers sick with COVID to come in and work. And now they have massive outbreaks. Hoocoodanode?
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: It’s all about the bailout. They think they’ll get more from the bailout than if they put adequate and appropriate health and safety measures in place and keep production going.
NotMax
@Kent
Heh. Obvious what you meant to say, yet as a typo not inaccurate either.
;)
p.a.
The overall national reaction to The Jungle was outrage over the treatment of the meat. The workers… not so much.
Kristine
@NotMax: My dog eats primarily frozen raw so that’s a concern.
Cheryl Rofer
I stocked up on beef, pork, chicken, and lamb at our local Farmers’ Market on Saturday. Probably have enough for six months or more. I don’t eat a lot of meat.
I figured that when this gets out, the local producers will be overwhelmed. No indication of that on Saturday, though.
Also: too many people at the Farmers’ Market as I was leaving. I will have to get there early when I go.
Jackie
Anne Laurie
Yup. And chicken is where Tyson makes most of its money. Ergo, they laid low while the pork/cattle processors were getting dinged earlier this month, but NOW…
Not up to date on how the ‘contract farms’ — essentially, tenant farmers, forced into factory-growing in order to fulfill the needs of corporate part uniformity — are going to be able to handle this problem. But I have a strong suspicion it’s a lot easier for an individual farmer to sell hoofstock privately, one animal at a time, than for Tyson’s serfs to find buyers for the extremely bioengineered bird-units that feed America’s greed for pre-portioned breast cutlets and restaurant chicken products.
Anne Laurie
Well, as it was explained to me in high-school English classes, those workers were immigrants, who lived crowded into filthy unsanitary conditions with all their kin, breeding like rabbits, endangering the health of True Americans. Sub-humans, at best. The people with political influence (like TRoosevelt) were *much* more concerned about the purity of their own precious bodily essences…
As I pointed out, at least one of the major offenders today, Smithfield, has jumped on that very explanation, in only slightly less xenophobic language. When times are tough, go with the classics!
Dog Dawg Damn
The Washington State Office of Drinking Water is raising alarms about a shortage of C02, which is a key component used in producing drinking water and processing good. A byproduct of ethanol, their suppliers have told them they can only meet 33% of demand. This is ~7 weeks into the shutdown.
Seriously concerned about the supply chain collapse on the horizon.
John Revolta
@Anne Laurie: bird-units
Sigh. That’s probably exactly what they call ’em too.
Kim Walker
I would be very curious to know how much meat has been surplused in deep freeze. I found one figure that said 1.8 billion pounds in 2018. Why are they trying to produce so much? Aren’t lots of restaurants closed and aren’t lots of people laid off? Isn’t demand down right now? Last October WSJ had an article on surplus pork: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-22/u-s-bacon-pile-is-biggest-in-48-years-but-may-start-to-ebb (sorry if this doesn’t work)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@joel hanes: Such things are fantasies!
Raoul
We know our household is among the privileged. First, that we can afford to shop at a natural foods coop, and that it is literally within walking distance (though we tend to drive as I want to shop as infrequently as possible so we load up the back of the car with stuff).
Except for the first more panic-driven week, our coop has had all the chicken, pork, turkey etc that I’ve always seen there. Small local producers seem to be coping OK. We were already, pre-covid, not eating beef or pork, and doing one day a week of fish and one day a week of plant based protein for dinner (breakfast is one egg, a little cheese, and fruits and grains. Lunch is PBJ on whole grain bread, or less often, more cheese).
So our household was doing ~5 nights a week chicken/turkey. We’ve cut even that back. In the last 9 evenings, we’ve had two chicken meals, four plant-based dinners, fish twice, and vegetarian pizza dinner once.
The mass market meatpacking industry is — and long has been — a nightmare. And driving across Nebraska as I do once or twice a year is enough to put me off beef forever (even without gout that I am treating w/o prescription drugs).
I know a lot of people can’t adjust fast to changing food supplies. We’re just really glad that veggie burgers and veggie bratwurst has gotten much better in the past couple years!
Anne Laurie
Keeping an animal alive costs more than keeping animal parts frozen for later use.
Also, shutting down a meat-processing plant is expensive, especially in a situation where there’s no guarantee it will ever be profitable to restart it.
Same problem as the current ‘oil glut’… shutting down a well is expensive, and dangerous, and it might never be possible to restart it. So the oil companies are pumping out a surplus, in hopes of getting bailed out by various governments.
Further, everyone hopes to be the ‘last man standing’; once those other plants shut down, there will be more pressure on the governments to bail out the whole industry, and the company that hasn’t yet shut down will have first-mover advantage once things ‘normalize’.
Anne Laurie
@John Revolta: Seriously, they just call them ‘units’.
This isn’t new; I took a Dairy Science 101 class some 40 years ago, which is where I was introduced to the ugly realities of modern farming. The alternative required class, for us pre-veterinary hopefuls, was Poultry Science 101… which was reliably reported to be even nastier than having to stick one’s arm up a cow’s rectum.
rikyrah
@Kent:
Man, I would go to a sale like this
oldgold
Within the last few days farmers in my area have been euthanizing young pigs being delivered to their hog finishing units.
Normally the young pigs are delivered in lots of 1500 to 1600 at a cost of approximately $10/ head.
The thinking behind this drastic action is that taking a loss of $16,000 now is beats running the risk of fattening these hogs and having no place to sell them
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
That’s being somewhat unfair to Teddy, who faced and overcame entrenched opposition to being what could be described as the first publicly-oriented proactive president*, changing the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches as well as elevating the tenet that the federal government’s power and authority necessitates obligations to the people. Faulting him for policies guided by principle which he knew were politically untenable and impossible to to push through Congress at the time is disingenuous.
Of course TR was no angel, his philosophical celebration of strenuous martial hawkishness being but one example of that.
*Had he not been assassinated so shortly after assuming office, Garfield could well have gone down in history as being so a couple of decades before TR.
rikyrah
@Kim Walker: I
I have been watching for a drop in price of bacon?
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: That’s not kosher!
Anne Laurie
Counter-intuitively, I suspect restaurants are going to have a particular advantage as we gradually come out of this: There are a lot of people who can’t, can’t always, or don’t want to go to the trouble of cooking ‘from scratch’. From what I’ve read, prepared-food vendors are among the first businesses that show up historically when the transition from villages to cities happens, because packing lots of busy people into one place makes buying meals more cost-effective than making them for a lot of the new denizens.
I’ve also read that one reason there are / were so many fried-chicken chains is that making fried chicken at home is messy & time-consuming. Turning newly-expensive cuts of meat, or unfamiliar vegetable-based protein products, into tasty meals is gonna be a major growth industry, come the jubilee.
NotMax
@rikyrah
If instead of charging they were paying people to purchase the stuff I still wouldn’t.
;)
Anne Laurie
@NotMax: Oh, I’m a Teddy stan, going back to visiting his childhood home (now a National Park site) when I was very young (and got a tiny Steiff teddy bear, as a souvenir). But one thing former American high school students of our generation tend to remember about The Jungle is the story that Roosevelt read a chapter over breakfast, screamed & threw his sausage out the WH window…
ziggy
@Kent: Meat chickens, or “meaties” have been bred to be very strange animals. They grow to size in only 7 to 8 weeks, which is really insane. If they aren’t butchered soon after that point, they can grow so big that their legs don’t support them, they literally cannot walk. It is rather gross. I actually prefer red meat over chicken because it is much easier to find pastured, well-raised beef, pork and lamb.
Factory farming is going to have all kinds of weak points that are falling apart quickly under stress. I am so glad we have great local meat farmers and butchers in my area. But of course you pay more for it (as we should).
Recall
South Dakota. Don’t put that evil on us.
debbie
Seriously, we’re still living in Upton Sinclair’s world, and we’re supposed to believe in AI? Suckers!!!
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
Most probably an urban myth.
And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
Also too, for respite, kind of a fun read: All the Presidents Ranked in Order of How Much They Loved Breakfast
debbie
@NotMax:
Smart man. Who knows how much salmonella lurks in soft, runny yolks? //
Raoul
@Anne Laurie: I have very rarely been a McD’s person in the past couple decades. A week ago I was joyriding after getting air for the car tires, and went past a fast food outlet of a clownish, red and yellow variety. Holy Drive-Thru batman! Indeed I think a lot of people aren’t scratch cooks.
I have enjoyed the culinary arts most of my life. But I can pretty surely say that I have never, at age 54, had a previous streak of +/-38 days in a row of cooking* dinner at home.
* Please allow me that one frozen pizza night. I did dress the pizza with home-cut tomatoes and pepitas before banging it in the oven, and had made spinach omelets that morning for breakfast as a weekend treat. And yes, I do buy veggie burgers, but those meals have home made sides :) .
We finally got to-go food on Saturday, first time in nearly 6 weeks (‘Sichuan’ salmon with pistachios, side of farm fresh green beans. I actually make better salmon at home, but it was heaven to not cook).
phdesmond
@rikyrah: i just watched and rewatched that. very interesting. an antimalarial drug called chloroquine, the researcher said.
John Revolta
@Anne Laurie: Ha! Years ago, I read all the James Herriot books, and I loved them, but as I said to my wife, “If I have to read one more time about this guy having his arm up to the shoulder in a cow’s ass………”
John Revolta
@NotMax: Bully!
NotMax
@John Revolta
Well, people had to find something to do to fill time before TV.
:)
John Revolta
@NotMax: “Hey Bossy! Guess how many fingers I’m holding up!”
Yutsano
@debbie: TR was so progressive he knew germ theory better than the scientists of the day!
Anne Laurie
@John Revolta: Well, it was (probably still is) a significant portion of the routine in any large-animal practice, however unglamorous.
I actually got off unscathed — only a ‘fortunate’ few actually had to palpate a Holstein’s ovaries from the inside. Although we all had to do a rectal-temp check!
The class was about 60% boys due to inherit their families’ dairy farms, and 40% squeamish pre-vet urbanites, mostly female. Just imagine how fun was ‘filmstrip day’, on the proper insemination via glass straws…
frosty
@rikyrah: Hi rikyrah – OT, I had some WWII book recommendations for a 12yo at the end of the DNA thread a day or two ago. If you can’t find them let me know. They date back to when I was 12 many years ago, but they still hold up.
cain
@Anne Laurie:
I also suspect that we might wean ourselves from fast food as well considering that people are now at home and are cooking.
rikyrah
@frosty:
I thought that I had gotten them.
If you would leave yours here, I would appreciate it?
JaneE
The absolute horror of eating a standard portion size. It would really collapse somebody’s pockets if everyone went to meatless Monday and 3 oz. portions of meat for dinner.
cain
@Kent:
I guess more people are going to eat roasters – small market or not. I honestly though feel really bad for these animals. :( Death is part of the cycle, but mass slaughter seems horrible.
joel hanes
@Kim Walker:
Why are they trying to produce so much?
The hogs that are ready to go to the packing plant today are probably six months old, so, maybe eight months ago was when the farmer was deciding how many to raise and laying in feed.
It’s a pipeline.
During that six-month lead time, coronavirus changed the market.
cain
@NotMax:
Conservatives opposing it.. yeah, that sounds like them alright. Assholes still being assholes even back in 1907.
daryljfontaine
I think we’ve found some good jobs for all of those economically anxious protesters we’ve seen lately.
D
Sloane Ranger
@Patricia Kayden: Ah, but having sexual assault allegations against you is a badge of honour if you’re a Republican, a badge of shame if you’re a Democrat.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: Hehe, Ringside Steakhouse
Let’s get ready to seeeeeeason with salt and fresh ground peeeeeeepper!