This time last year, Tyrone Gustafson’s small Iowa slaughterhouse and butchering facility, Story City Locker, was operating at about 80 percent capacity. Today, he estimates the demand has surged to approximately 120 percent and his slaughter and butchering schedule is booked out through the end of 2021.
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In recent months, meatpacking companies in different parts of the world have been associated with large clusters of COVID-19 infections. The Tönnies meat-processing plant in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, was temporarily closed, and U.S.-based pork processor Smithfield became a major focus of the disease in South Dakota, one of the country’s least-populated states. In Brazil, complaints abound about COVID-19 at slaughterhouses: 20% of the industry’s workers have been infected, according to the National Confederation of Workers in Food and Related-Industries (CNTA).
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For family farmers like Hans Breitenmoser, the odds of catching COVID-19 on the job are slim. Social distancing is not exactly a challenge when you’re farming more than 1,300 acres in rural Wisconsin. But Breitenmoser is one of many Wisconsin farmers who are showing solidarity with others in the food supply chain who are at the pandemic’s epicenter — meatpackers and food processing plant employees.
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Today, Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) introduced The Strengthening Local Processing Act, a comprehensive bill that addresses acute livestock supply chain issues and supports small meat and poultry processing plants.
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Around the end of March, Chris Swenson thought he had a problem with his Web site. Swenson is the head of Swenson ranches, a cattle operation in Elgin and Stamford that’s been in his family since 1882. It was started by his great-great-grandfather Svante Magnus Swenson, Texas’ first immigrant from Sweden.
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The facts are clear and they are shocking: Factory farming is unhealthy for consumers, dangerous for workers, and devastating for the environment, and it is the largest cause of animal cruelty in the history of mankind.
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On April 28, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the operation of meatpacking plants was a national security priority and directed his administration to "take all appropriate action" to "ensure that meat and poultry processors continue operations." Trump also ordered meatpackers to "continue their operations to the fullest extent possible." At the time, 6,500 meatpacking workers had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 20 had died.
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Cory Booker says the massive challenges facing the US right now are all tied to a “savagely broken food system”. And last week, his most recent challenge to that system gained new momentum, when a coalition of 300 farm, food, and environmental advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress urging legislators to pass a bill that would eventually eliminate the country’s largest concentrated animal feeding operations.
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In the 1930s, the average chicken sold at market weighed about two and a half pounds, and it gained each of those pounds over the course of about 45 days. Now, broiler chickens average upwards of six pounds, and they put each new one pound in just over a week.
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While most of us have recently witnessed empty shelves and higher price tags from the aisles of our local supermarkets, 2019 Fixer Graham Christensen has been fighting for solutions to our fractured food system from the fields. A fifth-generation farmer, Christensen founded the consulting company GC Resolve to help his home state of Nebraska establish more ethical and sustainable agricultural practices.
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