During the Covid-19 pandemic meat packing plants became hot beds for the spread of the virus. These outbreaks affected dozens of plants, leading to closures of some factories and disruption of others, and posed a significant threat to the meat supply in the United States. As of May 1, nearly 5,000 packing plant workers in 115 facilities, in 19 states had fallen ill, and 20 had died. Meat packing plants are notoriously known for having poor working conditions with everyone working close together on the disassembly line cutting meat.
Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, South Dakota had an outbreak that had 600 employees who tested positive for the virus. On April 12, 2020 Smithfield Food closed its plants to stop the rampant spread of the virus. Hundreds of federal meat inspectors have also been exposed to Covid-19, as the virus outbreak spread to thousands of workers at processing plants across the country.
On April 28, 2020 President Donald Trump, who loves MacDonald Hamburgers, used the Defense Production Act to insist meatpacking plants to remain open. The order requiring plants to remain open will threaten the health of workers returning to work after the plants closed last week because of the Covid-19 outbreak. The executive order named such plants “critical infrastructure,” but did not include a specific order for them to remain open. Trump’s order also seeks to shield meat companies from legal liability if they are sued by employees who contract COVID-19 while on the job. What s needed is a robust, continuous testing infrastructure for workers and their families, but that has not been put in place. It has been reported that some employers have failed to provide face masks and are not consistently offering personal protective equipment (PPE) to non-management employees. What’s more, many slaughterhouse employees are not guaranteed sick pay for COVID-19-related illness or premium pay for working extra hours in hazardous conditions.
Trump’s production act is considered by some to be a paper-thin proclamation with limited legal effect. At least seven Covid-19 affected meatpacking plants have shut their doors since the April 28th executive order. That’s in line with the average of eight weekly plant closures in the month leading up to the order.
What happens to the animals now that meatpacking plants close? The hard fact is that they will not live an idyllic life in open fields. The industrial scale farms have no place to send their cows, pigs and chickens so their facilities are becoming overcrowded by the glut of animals. Farmers are choosing to either starve the animals or kill them on mass. Millions of animals are being slaughtered and left to decompose. It is an orgy of waste.
Daybreak Foods used carbon dioxide to kill 61,000 egg laying hens in Minnesota. Others have covered flocks in foam which suffocates them. Another method has been to shut off ventilation and allow the animals to died from the heat build up. Pigs are being killed by gun shots, electrocution and blunt force trauma also known as “thumping” where baby pigs are slammed head first into the ground. By a conservative estimate 2 million animals have been killed.
This then creates another problem. What can be done with all the decomposing carcasses? Rendering plants can turn some animal mass into dog food or fertilizer but these plants are also closing down or working at a limited capacity due to the virus. Disposal in land fills requires leak proof trailers with absorbent liners. Burial requires adherence to state and federal water protection regulations. Open pit burning has health costs due to dangerous particulate matter. These kinds of ultimate solutions have not been used since World War II. This is a nightmare of a situation where life of any kind is considered expendable in the rush to open the economy.
Despite growing evidence that the pandemic is still raging, President Trump and other administration officials said on Tuesday May 5, 2020, that they had made so much progress in bringing it under control that they planned to wind down the Coronavirus Task Force in the coming weeks and focus the White House on restarting the economy.