The coronavirus spread at more than twice the national rate in U.S. counties with major meatpacking plants in the first week after President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing that they be reopened.
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As we face empty grocery shelves the fragility of our highly consolidated food system has become clear during the crisis of COVID-19. We see a market that lacks the resiliency to shift supply lines and fill those shelves, but also a food system that does not provide (and in most cases never has provided) fair wages or adequate safety protection to workers.
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"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."
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More than 700 employees at a Tyson Foods meat factory in Perry, Iowa, have tested positive for the coronavirus as the nation braces for a possible meat shortage due to the pandemic. An Iowa Department of Public Health report released Tuesday showed that 58 percent of the factory's workforce had tested positive for the virus, NBC affiliate WHO of Des Moines reported.
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Cargill Ltd, which operates the High River, Alberta slaughterhouse that is Canada’s single largest COVID-19 outbreak, has another dirty secret: it channels most of the profits from its Canadian operations to its American billionaire owners through holding companies based in the tax haven of Luxembourg.
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President Donald Trump’s executive order this week requiring American meatpacking plants to stay open during the coronavirus pandemic is raising new questions about massive U.S. meat exports, particularly the export of pork to China.
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Some experts have hypothesized that the novel coronavirus made the jump from animals to humans in China’s wet markets, just like SARS before it. Unsurprisingly, many people are furious that the markets, which were closed in the immediate wake of the outbreak in China, are already reopening.
Read moreWorkers at a Smithfield Foods pork plant in Milan, Mo., say that for years they have endured repetitive stress injuries on the meat processing line — and urinary tract infections because they had so few bathroom breaks.
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The action is being pursued by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), which says that the firm has used misleading advertising claims in using the term pasture raised. The claim has now been lodged in court in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
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It can feel wrong, or simply impossible, to focus on anything other than getting through this most challenging moment. It is reasonable to argue that since lessons will not reduce our immediate suffering, we should learn them once we’re through this. But the vulnerability that makes the present so painful is exactly why some discussions cannot wait.
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