A sobering, sad article on the meat production situation in America
Last edited Fri May 8, 2020, 10:26 PM - Edit history (1)
If you go to Wendy’s this week, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to get a hamburger. Go to the supermarket, and you’ll probably see some empty shelves in the meat section. You may also be restricted to buying one or two packs of whatever’s available. Try not to look at the prices. They’re almost definitely higher than what you’re used to.
This is the new reality: an America where beef, chicken, and pork are not quite as abundant or affordable as they were even a month ago. The coronavirus pandemic has hit the meatpacking industry hard, as some of the worst virus outbreaks in the United States have occurred in the tight, chilly confines of meat processing plants. Standing elbow-to-elbow, workers there — many of them immigrants, in already dangerous roles and making minimum wage — are facing some of the highest infection rates in the nation.
Sick workers mean meatpacking plants are shutting down, and these closures are contributing to a deeply disruptive breakdown in the meat supply chain. The vast majority of meat processing takes place in a small number of plants controlled by a handful of large corporations, namely Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, JBS USA Holdings Inc., and Cargill Inc. More than a dozen of these companies’ beef, chicken, and pork plants closed in April, and despite an order by President Trump to reopen the plants, managers fear that doing so will put lives at risk so facilities continue to close. There have been nearly 5,000 reported cases of workers with Covid-19 at some 115 meat processing facilities nationwide. At least 20 meatpacking workers have died.
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If all this has you thinking about The Jungle, you’re on the right track. Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel turned the American meat industry upside down just over a century ago, exposing inhuman working conditions for immigrants in processing plants in Chicago. But the public seemed less interested in the human interest aspect of the book, instead fixating on details of the dangerously unsanitary meatpacking plants. A few months after The Jungle was published in 1906, the United States government passed the Meat Inspection Act and established the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Sinclair famously said of the legislation, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
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The situation isn’t much different for the other major meat processing companies. Smithfield has closed plants in Wisconsin and Missouri, as well as its massive Sioux Falls plant, which is one of the nation’s largest. Cargill shuttered plants in Pennsylvania and Nebraska. JBS USA shut down its beef production facility in Colorado and a pork plant in Minnesota. The latter recently reopened with a new option “to provide producers with a humane euthanasia option.” This is another way of saying that the corporation will help farmers kill and bury their animals rather than process them for human consumption. Other plants are reopening with social distancing in place, which slows down the processing line and allows only a limited number of workers to return. Meanwhile, the conditions for the animals in all of these situations are potentially worse than before as uncertainty leaves them waiting longer in boxcars and holding pens rather than living in open spaces.
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more: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/8/21248618/coronavirus-meat-shortage-food-supply-chain-grocery-stores
= new reply since forum marked as read
They were a pretty decent employer with great benefits and the place I worked was not as horrible as their slaughterhouses...err plants. They're getting whacked bad by the virus. Where I worked in Miami got the double whammy because they supplied the cruise lines. 
If anyone ever offers you a tour of one of these plants, do not go!
Inside the slaughterhouse
'North America’s largest single coronavirus outbreak started at this Alberta meat-packing plant. Take a look within.'
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/cargill-covid19-outbreak
