Meat Shortage? Could Be. Here's Why:

[MineralMan]

When the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls closed, with a spectacular hundreds of workers testing positive for COVID-19, alarm bells went off in the meat industry. Would similar fates befall other meat processing companies?

They almost certainly would. And they will continue to. The reason is simple:

To cut costs, meat processors hire workers who will not protest the execrable work conditions inside the plants. In Sioux Falls, workers were a combination of Nepalese immigrants and Hispanic workers. Some of them were even legal workers with real green cards. Some of them.

Meat processing is a shitty job with shitty pay. The line involves close contact with other workers, and the only priority is speed. How fast can you do your job while wielding a razor-sharp knife? How low a wage will you accept? If you can't come to work, you are fired at once. There is always someone who will do the work in your place.

Inside, the doors are locked at the beginning of the shift. There are few bathroom breaks, if any. It stinks in there of flesh and blood and human sweat. You're covered with blood and tiny bits of meat. The meat just keeps coming, and you have one job to do in the process of breaking down hogs or sides of beef. One job, which you are expected to do as fast as you possibly can, because the person next to you has another job to do on the meat as soon as you do yours. If you're slow, you're fired. If you cut yourself to the bone, you're fired. If you get sick, work anyway, or you're fired. If you complain, you're fired. If you do anything but cut meat, you're fired.

You don't need to speak English. Nobody cares. The pusher on your line knows enough of your first language to say, "Faster. Hurry. Faster."

You're family is counting on your wages, so you can't quit. The plant you work at is in a city that is almost all white people who don't like you one bit. You live out of town or on the edge of town, in terrible housing with your family, if you have one. If you quit or get fired, there is no other job for you in the area. You are a meat processor. What's your name? Who cares! Work Faster!

There are meat processing plants all over the place, but they're all the same. And the COVID-19 virus is coming to each and every one of them. They can't separate workers. They don't care. There's always someone else to cut the meat. Until there isn't.

[sandensea]

1. Veggie burgers

The protein that doesn't bite back.

[MineralMan]

4. Yeah, well, that stuff is produced by workers, too, you know.

From the fields where the produce is grown to the factory where your "Impossible Burger" is manufactured. Same people as those who work in the meat processing plant.

But, you feel better about it because there's no blood. OK.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

14. Good point

This isn't good that this is affecting our food chain. I guess we'll see how much people will put up with. It is still virtually impossible to buy toilet paper in my area. Been that way for a month now.

[Butterflylady]

20. Well

You just turned me into vegetarian. Thanks!

[customerserviceguy]

6. I seem to remember

various e-coli recalls of plant products, most notably Romaine lettuce. We really are all in this together, no matter how righteous we think our choices are.

[MineralMan]

13. Here's a video you should watch.

[sandensea]

26. Yes. I read your first reply.

Eat what you like - and let others do likewise.

Thank you, and have a nice Monday.

[MineralMan]

27. I do, and I made no judgment about others.

You don't know what I eat based on my post.

[sandensea]

28. Good.

And I never figured you for someone who did.

I almost always agree with - and enjoy - your posts, Mineral Man. We just can't agree on every last thing, that's all.

Have a good evening, my good sir.

[womanofthehills]

49. But the protein in veggie burgers is tainted with Roundup

Esp the Impossible Burger. Know where your beef comes from - buy free range if you can. Luckily, I live in ranching country. Two weeks ago I forgot to close my gate - and five cows were outside of my house.

[sandensea]

57. Right. You have to be a little choosy with those, like with anything.

Whole Foods has several organic and otherwise very good varieties.

And lest we forget, most beef has lots of glyphosate residue due to the feed.

But as always, you has to know what works for you and what doesn't.

[customerserviceguy]

2. All true

I remember an article in "The New Yorker" from a couple of years ago that described the conditions in meatpacking plants. But, I would imagine that vegetable and fruit processing plants have the same situation.

[MineralMan]

3. Yes, you're right. All food processing is pretty much the same.

Where I grew up there were citrus processing plants. Packing Houses, they were called. Everyone who worked in them was Hispanic. It was either the packing house or picking or other ag work .

We don't know where our food comes from. We don't really want to know. We get our food at the supermarket. That's all we need to know.

I worked in and for a dairy. Not so many people involved in that process. It was very hard work, though, from the milking barn and the milk processing area to delivering the milk to people's houses. It was a good job for me when I was 16-17 years old. Not such a good job for real grownups, though. The pay was poor.

[customerserviceguy]

5. I'm glad we got that out there

before the veggie types tell us that eating meat is the cause of all ill in this world!

[MineralMan]

7. Someone beat you to it, apparently.

I guess that veggie stuff isn't handled by workers. It just sort of magically appears, somehow.

[customerserviceguy]

8. That's what it looks like

in my produce department. Wham, there are sacks of potatoes that just got picked off the trees!

[MineralMan]

11. LOL!

[yewberry]

19. Nothing like a couple of unprovoked digs

from Mr. "DU is not hostile to vegans."

[customerserviceguy]

23. After you banned me from

playing in your sandbox, I thought I'd live down to your expectations. Somebody has to defend carnivorism here.

[yewberry]

29. I didn't have anything to do your ban from the VVAR group.

You did that all on your own by going into the group and repeatedly insulting us.

And here you are again, disproving your claim that DU isn't hostile to vegans and vegetarians and playing the poor, oppressed majority.

Wherever your hatred toward us springs from, it's ugly and unnecessary.

[captain queeg]

9. You have a very good grasp of the situation

It’s been a long time, but I’m sure the basic situation is the same. I worked at several meat plants when I was young and it’s really shitty, hard physical work. It’s essentially a production line with conveyor belts for smaller dressed meat sections and rails for halves and quarters, etc. you are on the clock and working constantly. Some places would require you to punch out just to take a piss. Some places monitored how much you produced and you had to reach a minimum daily goal. One place was “piece work” you got paid per item completed. And I won’t dwell on sanitation but people are crowded together under all sorts of circumstances. I figured these places would see quick spreads of the virus.

The workforce was increasingly Hispanic years ago and I’d guess it would be all most totally so now. The first time I’d ever heard of “la migra” was went they came into a plant in AZ I was working. Everyone suddenly scattered, I though someone had a gun. But I learned the immigration raid were common and the place had a migrant camp concealed out back. When a batch got caught, they’d let some more in. I guess between that and picking apples in WA I am sympathetic to those migrants who are willing to do the shitty jobs most white Americans won’t do.

[MineralMan]

10. There's a lot more automation than there once was, but there's still

a lot of hand work to be done. Animal carcasses are not identical, so hand/eye coordination is required to do a lot of the work.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s in an agricultural community. In sixth grade, one of our class field trips was to a pork processing plant, where we got the tour and watched the process from live pigs to pork chops. A couple of kids fainted and were carried out. The rest of us learned where our meat came from.

Immigrant workers are used because they're cheap and compliant. That has always been the case.

[captain queeg]

15. I mostly worked with beef at least on a large scale

Only a couple years on the kill floor. Nowadays I guess they have machines that bone chickens. Most of my work was boning beef and as far as I know that is still manual. There’s a certain degree of skill involved, but when they break it into pieces someone can learn a specific piece pretty quickly.

[MineralMan]

18. Yeah. I've watched someone break down a whole pig and turn it into

cuts of meat for a restaurant. That takes amazing skills. However, if the carcass is reduced to primal cuts it gets simpler, and then when those are broken down, it gets simpler yet to cut it into finished cuts of meat. Once a relatively unskilled worker learns those final steps, they can do the job over and over and over again almost automatically.

I've never worked in the meat industry, nor could I break down a carcass and do the job that master butcher did.

[captain queeg]

21. Hadn't heard the term master butcher in a long time

When I first started cutting meat out of high school it was considered a pretty decent trade. I suppose they had apprenticeships but I just worked my way up with OJT. There was even a meat cutting school in southern OH, I worked with a guy who had gone there. But nowadays things are done at the plant level and each guy is only good at one thing. Everything is processed at the plant and at the store there isn’t much skill beyond just cutting the boneless pieces. I’m talking about the big supermarkets. I haven’t seen a real sirloin steak for 30-40 years. That was always my favorite. The one with a long bone and part of the tenderloin. Anyways I’m just glad I saw the writing on the wall and went back to school when I did.

[LeftInTX]

48. OMG!!

What a field trip!!!!

We want to a Yankee colonial village thing..however, there was no meat involved...

[MineralMan]

50. It was an amazing field trip. I can't imagine such a thing

happening these days for a sixth grade class. It was a different time, for sure.

Perhaps we should revisit what kids learn in school. Most people are not exposed to much reality these days, unless they work at such a place. My elementary school took classes on all sorts of field trips. Each year, we were exposed to things that were deemed appropriate for whatever age we were. In the fourth grade, I remember a field trip to the local dairy, along with one to a nearby Old Spanish Mission, where we were surprised to hear some hard facts about the impact of those missions on the indigenous people who were already there. In fifth grade, we visited both a poultry and egg plant, where we saw how chickens were raised for meat and how eggs were laid and processed. That was another eye-opener.

The philosophy of that school district was to expose students to things as they were, rather than just presenting an idealized view of things. My little town had a very good school system, I think. It may have been different in other towns. I don't know.

[IowaGuy]

12. And the irony is....

they are "essential workers". If the government did not turn a blind eye to the practice of hiring undocumented workers and actually frog marched the owners into a court room for hiring them, much of the problems re: low wages and safety concerns would go away. We would however have to pay more for our hot dogs. The Republican party gets money from the agribusiness owners to do nothing significant regarding immigration, but then on the other hand gets votes for embracing racist tropes against those same "essential workers".

[MineralMan]

17. The most "essential" thing about them is how little you can pay them

to get the work done. That is best accomplished by using fear as a motivator. Fear of deportation is the most common one, followed by fear of losing your shitty job.

[zackymilly]

16. All this oil, and no meat to cook in it. n/t

[Drahthaardogs]

22. And that is why I buy from the farmer

And usually butcher my own. They take it to the local processor who kill, skins, and quarters it, then I pick up the quarter and butcher at home.

[raccoon]

24. Upton Sinclair, is that you? Seriously this is good. Nt

[dalton99a]

25. Kick

[Hekate]

30. Thank you

[MineralMan]

31. I keep being struck by who is called an essential worker.

It seems like most of them get little respect most of the time. Maybe that should change.

[Hekate]

32. True dat

[madinmaryland]

33. Unions. There should be no no restriction workers organizing.

[MineralMan]

34. Yes. Good idea, of course.

The problem is that the same reasons companies can intimidate workers and pay them so poorly are the reasons they can't successfully organize.

[stopdiggin]

35. take a look at the states where

most of the processing is done these days. No, it's not 100% .. but the strong correlation that exists didn't come about by accident.

[MineralMan]

36. Sure. Right to Work States Often Have More Companies That

take advantage of workers and use aggressive tactics to prevent them from organizing.

Mostly, consumers are unaware of any of this, because workers in such facilities are not part of their social circle, to put it mildly.

[RANDYWILDMAN]

37. Fast Food nation and the Jungle

Explained all of the things you told us, a long time ago. This has sadly been set up by the faster and quicker method of food processing in the US. Terribly SAD (not Trump sad, but really SAD) for all the people who have to work in subpar conditions. Mabye this would be the impotus to change the conditons in this industry, but I doubt it....

[Codeine]

39. I remember the impact The Jungle had on me

when I was 13. I genuinely believe I had more effect on my life than any other work of literature.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

40. "Fast Food Nation" was a real EYE-OPENER for me.

Especially the part about all of the Hispanic workers being INVITED into CA (George Deukmejian, we're looking at you.) to go to work picking in the fields, to do work that NO American would EVER do. I remember that one particular segment talked about how everyone wanted "strawberries on the cereal." Picking strawberries is one of the most physically-challenging, back breaking, labor-intensive jobs on earth.

And now, with greenhouses and forced budding of plant life, it is ALWAYS strawberry season in the US.

So, when people start bitching about the number of Hispanic people here in the US - legally or not - I sternly remind them that MANY of them were INVITED here in the first place, to do work that they, themselves, would never dream of doing.

[Jamastiene]

41. There has been no meat at my local grocery store since this thing started, and I mean, none.

Most of the other shelves are empty except lite and low fat stuff at this point too. They are getting some supplies back in, but meat has not come back since this thing started. Where are people able to find meat? I'd do anything for some milk and/or ice cream, and of course, TP, because I haven't seen any TP in any store, online, or elsewhere, (unless you want to pay TP scalpers on Ebay and I do not), since this thing started either.

[cwydro]

42. These places are hell,on earth.

Ugh.

[Kali]

43. well if you want beef at 3 or 4 bucks a pound, yes that is the story.

there is going to be plenty of beef around, but you may need to do some work and pay more for it, but it would be better for all concerned if that were to happen.

we likes our cheap food in this country.

[El Mimbreno]

44. The Jungle

By Upton Sinclair. In 100+ years, sanitation has improved. Working conditions... not so much.

[MineralMan]

45. Yes. I read that book many, many years ago.

It was a shocking revelation to me at the time.

[El Mimbreno]

47. My dad introduced me to it...

I was probably about 13 at the time, total book addict.
Shocking is right.

[MineralMan]

54. I was about the same age when I read it.

I found it at the library when I was browsing through the stacks. I pulled out a lot of books that way to read. The title grabbed me.

[In_The_Wind]

46. Thank you

[NNadir]

51. I'm happy I haven't eaten that stuff for many decades.

Thanks for the Upton Sinclair update.

[Marrah_Goodman]

52. These companies are going to be forced to make changes to stay in business

At least I hope that is what happens.

[MineralMan]

53. To make those changes will require cutting production by at least 50%.

That's going to be a hard sell.

[Marrah_Goodman]

55. Meat would end up a bit more expensive, but it would be better for the workers

Maybe better for us too, healthwise. I say that as a carnivore who relys on SNAP for my food.

[MineralMan]

56. Yes, probably, on both counts.

However, the question will be whether the slower production is profitable for the company.

If it's not, it will not happen.

When I was younger, it was common to see rabbit in the meat department at supermarkets. Today, you won't find cut-up rabbits at all, except in specialty stores. Due to lack of demand and the small producers of rabbits, selling rabbit meat ceased to be profitable, so it all disappeared.

The meat industry is rapidly being automated. There are some videos on YouTube of automated production lines for pork and beef. There is still some hand work involved, of course, but fewer employees are required in those automated meat packing houses.

Pig farmers raise pigs to meet pretty precise specifications these days. Automation is the reason.

I'd suggest viewing those Videos, but they're pretty depressing, really.