Meat + Fowl Processing Plants

_{Published 26 June 2020; updated 12 May 2022}

The Industrial Meat Complex

All the major news outlets have written articles on the pandemic, and sources of the outbreaks that are still happening. Specifically, they have written about outbreaks in nursing homes or assistive living facilities, immigration detention centers, and prisons. Clearly those facilities are a dangerous place for outbreaks, in that older, compromised, or vulnerable people are confined in close quarters.

But then later, outbreaks started happening in some of the 6,032 meat-related packing and processing plants in the USA. Although worth 100B and having ~500k workers in total, most people know nothing about what happens in these packing and processing plants. This is the case, because these companies have spent time, money, legal, and political capital on limiting or prohibiting photos, plant visitors, and even data from getting to the public, or even to governmental and regulatory agencies.

• The MeatInstitute states that 150k people work in meat packing plants slaughtering animals, 121k+ work in meat processing plants, and 239K+ work in poultry processing.
• These workers are low wage employees, the average hourly wage for meat packing plants is $12.32, for employees in meat processing plants the average is $12.94 an hour. Put another way, these workers receive a bit over $25,000/year.

Large food conglomerates own these plants, and they are rich, have efficient lobbyists, and definitely are well connected politically. The top companies include: Smithfield, Tyson, JBS USA, Cargill Meat Solutions, Purdue Farms, among others.

• For this post I am using a generic term “meat” to include chicken, beef, pork, etc.
• I am going to use “plant” to mean butchering plants, processing plants, and packaging plants.

Why Meat Plant Outbreaks?

Thousands of Covid-19 meat plant workers are or have been infected, 100+ have died, and meanwhile most news organizations indicate the reported numbers are probably undercounted.

• What is it with meat plants that has turned them into Covid-19 hot spots?
• Why has the Federal Government ordered them, and no other businesses, to remain open despite not having required safety protocols in place?
• Why have these businesses not been able to take necessary precautions for their staff, resulting in climbing infection rates?
• Why is the government trying to protect these businesses with laws to limit or eliminate legal exposure?

Conditions at Processing Plants?

Wired, Vox, and others write that the conditions in meat plants are perfect for the spread of disease in general; and Covid-19 in particular. In my attempt to understand why, I have read several reports on the conditions in meat plants, and believe me the conditions sound horrendous, and the following list is what I have taken away from these descriptions.

• The processing line is a fast and constant traveling conveyer belt of animal body parts that allows staff little room to do anything but cut the meat or fowl per their station.
• The design of these facilities are to make the processing line more efficient so greater amounts of meat get through the system.
  • Below is how many animals are processed in the USA per year per MeatIndustry.
    • 9 billion chickens.
    • 32.2 million cattle and calves
    • 241.7 million turkeys
    • 2.2 million sheep and lambs
    • 121 million hogs
• Staff are densely packed into the warehouses, shoulder-to-shoulder, standing near the conveyer belt. As a result, it is impossible to distance even 3’ from one another, certainly not 6’
• The actual noise of all the machines is so loud, staff need to get close to someones ears and yell, to be heard,. They cannot help but emit spray all over the head and face of each other.
  • Researchers note that just talking spreads the virus. The virus is in the aerosols we shoot while breathing, talking, singing, yelling, coughing and sneezing.
• The relentless conveyer belt is not stopped. Going to the bathroom requires yelling into a supervisor’s ear to have a quick replacement jump in and process while one uses the restroom
• These facilities process so much, in fact, that often staff may have only seconds to complete their repetitive tasks, which leads to exertion, and thus more rapid breathing of shared air.
• Such hard work also causes sweat, so masks slip but there is no time to fix that before the next product appears for processing
• Blood, fat, meat and all of the meat debris is splattered everywhere, so keeping personal hygiene is nearly impossible
• These plants are both very cold and hyper ventilated to help keep the meat safe, but therefore, also function to spread the virus. Some people think, in fact, that this environment can actually increase its spread.

But there are also social conditions contributing as well. Wired writes: Meat processing is an exhausting, dangerous, labor-intensive job done primarily by underpaid, undocumented workers and recent immigrants to the US. Out of necessity, many of them live in multigenerational homes or other crowded housing environments. And many workers may commute together on a company or town bus with confined air.

Steps to Presidential Order?

March

March 28th ProPublica reports a meat inspector died, workers walked off the job at a Purdue meat plant, and in general many workers were testing positive for the virus.

They reported that only Union plant employees receive sick leave, workers at non-union plants do not. So staying at work while sick was incentivized.

April

More meat + fowl processing workers were getting sick, staying home, or calling in unwilling to risk their lives.

• 4/25 WaPo reports that workers at Arkansas-based Tyson, Smithfield, and JBS USA had been ordered to report to work, even if sick, and were not given PPE until weeks later.
• 4/26 As quoted by Time, Chairman of the Board for Tyson ran a full page NYT ad and writes, in part:
  • As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain.
  • As a result, there will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed.
• 4/28 News outlets reported that Trump ordered the Meat and Fowl Processing plants to reopen.
  • The stated concern was over a potential disruption of meat in the food chain, resulting in less meat being available to USA people.
  • At the same time, Slate reports workers in states quick to reopen would lose unemployment benefits even if they’re too fearful to return yet. Another incentive to work while sick.

I believe the intent of this advertisement was to catch Trump’s attention. These industries wanted Trump to iniate a Governmental “return to work” order for two reasons 1) To preserve Big Ag profits, and 2) to set indemnity for the pandemic outbreaks in their industry. Others believe it was also to create pandemic panic buying of meat and fowl, similar to TP and sanitizers

May

May 12th CDC issued guidance (not requirements) on opening meat and poultry processing plants. This occurred weeks after Trump ordered opening meat plants, and active outbreaks were already being reported across the country.

June

USA Today presented an article explaining that while companies were cautioning of meat shortages, they were also selling, and sending large amounts of meat to China.

• They write, Instead, some critics say, the fear was used to justify the executive order, which provided some liability protection for meatpacking plants. 
• Further USA Today points out that, red meat and poultry products in cold storage grew by about 40 million pounds from March to April, reaching 2.5 billion pounds, USDA data show. Showing no imminent disruption of the meat supply as there was plenty in storage and growing.
• USA Today also writes, from March 20 to April 24, the industry produced 171 million fewer pounds of beef and pork than during the same stretch last year. But the industry exported about 636 million pounds over the same time span, nearly four times the deficit. That number has since grown to more than 1.3 billion pounds exported through early June. Thus, if there were to be disruptions, they could have cut back on exports and point that food to local use.

2022 Update

WaPo’s headline says it all, Meat industry hyped ‘baseless’ shortage to keep plants open amid covid. The biggest players in the U.S. meat industry pressed “baseless” claims of beef and pork shortages early in the pandemic to persuade the Trump White House to keep processing plants running, disregarding the coronavirus risks that eventually killed at least 269 workers, according to a special House committee investigating the nation’s pandemic response.

Further, an estimated 334,000 coronavirus cases nationwide have been tied to meatpacking plants, resulting in more than $11 billion in economic damage, according to research from the University of California at Davis. Researchers found that per capita infection rates in counties that housed beef- and pork-processing facilities were twice as high. In counties with chicken-processing facilities, the transmission rate was 20 percent higher.

Why Not Take Precautions?

From the meat plants point of view, as expressed by their trade associations, the owners are already taking as much precaution as they can. From my point of view, precautions alone are not enough. They really need to rebuild the plants for safety, not for efficient meat processing.

• There are no enforceable requirements associated with opening and running these facilities in terms of the pandemic, only guidelines.
• If the Managers temperature test everyone entering the facility, there is no guarantee that a spreader has a fever. So this testing may be completely moot.
• Even if they wanted to, there is not enough testing equipment readily available to check if anyone is positive for the virus. And testing has to be repeated for you may not be sick now, but could be sick next week.
• If they provide masks at the beginning of each work day, when the masks shift, due to the physical movement or sweat, the processing line is set to a fixed rate. There is no time to take care of personal safety.
• Even if they slow down the processing line, to allow a bit more distance between workers, they still have to communicate by yelling at each other, and with slipped masks it exposes everyone.

In fact, ProPublica writes, emails reveal chaos as meatpacking companies fought health agencies over COVID-19 outbreaks in their plants. Thousands of pages of documents obtained by ProPublica show how quickly public health agencies were overwhelmed by meatpacking cases. One CEO described social distancing as “a nicety that makes sense only for people with laptops.”

The point I am making, which is in line with others, is that even if the companies had good intentions, they would have to completely rethink the processing lines. Assembly line architects would have to completely redo work sites with safety at the core of its design rather than the rate of meat processed. That is not likly to happen for, to quote the Conversation, The higher a plant’s daily throughput – that is, the more animals it turns into meat – the more lucrative it is.

Bottom Line?

Workers Continue to Die

MidwestInvestigates (6/18/2020) reports, since the executive order, COVID-19 cases tied to meatpacking plants have skyrocketed from fewer than 5,000 at the time to more than 25,000 as of this week, according to tracking from the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Deaths have increased five-fold to 91. They comment that, USDA’s lack of authority to regulate worker safety — coupled with CDC and OSHA issuing guidelines rather than regulations — has left workers vulnerable to meatpacking industry inaction, experts said. 

We Can Cause Change

As a result, here are some changes I think those of us who eat meat need to consider.

• Reduce meat consumption, or consider moving more toward the vegetarian side of the diet options. I am a Flexitarian so am primarily vegetarian with occasional meat or dairy products.
• Reconsider reliance on meat for protein. Other foods also have protein, so I mix it up more with plant-based protein, and faux meats for certain recipes. Although not vegan, I find hunger satisfaction with many vegan recipes.
• Use meat as only one part of the ingredients for a dish, not the whole dish. This means do not serve steak and potatoes, where the main course is the steak. I would rather serve a beef stew that uses less meat and serves more people.
• When I do buy meat, I spend more money on the meat because I prefer buying from smaller farms and consortiums that treat animals humanely during their lives. We should be paying what it really costs to humanely raise the animals. Because it costs more I cook recipies that extend the use of the meat and nothing gets wasted.
• I also prefer to make stock and consume meat via the broth than actually eat the meat. Home made broths, if made from good ingredients, carry lots of protein, minerals, and good stuff that are easily consumable and lend flavor to foods.

The only way to change meat plant conditions is to lesson our support of their activities. It means knowing where your food comes from. It requires not buying from the large factories. It means spending more to actively support those who work their farms more humanely, for animals and workers.

—Patty

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GOOD News: AlterNet reports that On January 22, 2020, a federal judge struck down the nation’s oldest “ag-gag” law, the latest in a series of victories against these laws and in favor of the First Amendment right to seek the truth about how animal agribusinesses treat the animals in their care. Kansas’s Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act, passed in 1990, criminalized a wide range of conduct related to animal facilities, most importantly, entering an animal facility not open to the public with the intent to take photographs or recordings.

Study: LiveScience reports on a study: There’s some good and bad news about vitamins and minerals: The good news is that intake of certain vitamins and minerals is linked with a lower risk of early death. The bad news is that this link is seen only when those nutrients come from food, not supplements, according to a new study.

News: MSNBC announced on 6/22 1 in 25 migrant workers appear to be infected with the virus. This is an outrageous ratio.

Tip: The best way to keep fried foods crispy? Do what I always suggest on fried food, place the fried food on a cooling rack, set in a parchment lined baking sheet to cool and drip off oil. If frying batches, do the same thing, but place the baking sheet into a low temp oven to keep warm. Some food, like french fries, can be fried twice to make them crispier.