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“I’m trying to connect our network with the people who would like to have that food in their home,” she said on Michael Dimock’s podcast, Flipping the Table, on March 26. “We can sort of skip the restaurant for now. … We could help people do the cooking in their own kitchen.”
Could America’s small- to mid-sized meat processors pick up the lost capacity when large packers have to close? They might. But federal meat-inspection laws and regulations are standing in the way.
As COVID-19 swept through U.S. meatpacking plants (slaughterhouses currently account for almost half of the country’s hotspots), plants closed, leaving farmers with millions of animals they couldn’t get to market. This prompted Tyson to take out an ad in the New York Times, warning that the “food supply chain is breaking.”
But COVID-19 didn’t break the food system. The four Big Meat titans—Tyson, Smithfield, JBS and Cargill—broke the supply chain. They did it by forcing consolidation in the meatpacking industry, which ultimately created another “too big to fail” industry.
Congress has a plan to save Big Meat, by taking an old law intended to help family farmers in times of crisis, and turning it into a rescue plan for big corporations.
This Friday, May 22, marks the International Day for Biological Diversity. Every year, the United Nations uses this day as an opportunity both to celebrate the Earth’s stunning biodiversity and to recognize our task to protect it.
Long before the virus, Americans had become socially isolated, retreating into sprawling suburbs and an online world of screens. When we emerge from our pandemic-mandated separation, can we reconnect with each other and reconsider how the way we live impacts the natural world?
As the owner of a small farm, I’m frequently amazed at how little Washington understands the work that goes into putting food on our plates, but coronavirus has made it impossible to ignore the labor of grocery store employees, farmers, processors and food producers.
Two weeks ago, we asked you to “Tell Congress: No more COVID-19-contaminated factory farm slaughterhouses!”
Members of Congress listened!
On May Day, Reps. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) introduced legislation o help small farmers during the COVID-19 crisis by, among other things, making it easier for them to get grants to process grass-fed and pasture-raised meat.
Will Harris is at odds with the way most producers get meat to the American public. The Georgia farmer shuns the large production plants that dominate the protein supply chain in the country, raising his “athletes” — hens, pigs and cattle and seven other species — on 3,200 acres near the Alabama border.
"Multinational corporations have concentrated our food system to its breaking point," said Jake Davis, a Missouri farmer, and national policy director at Family Farm Action, in a statement backing the measure. "Mega meatpackers have extracted profits from farmers, workers, and consumers for too long," he said. "This pandemic has shined a bright light on those abuses."
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a plan this week to purchase $470 million in surplus food from farmers and ranchers to be donated to communities nationwide, Politico reported.
