Production lines in meatpacking factors are perfect conduits for Covid-19. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty
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The Green Bay Packers are America’s most famous football team. They got their name from the Indian Packing Company, a local meat processing firm that sponsored their first set of jerseys. Outside of Wisconsin, not many Americans know that story. This week, however, Green Bay is in the news for reasons other than its football team. It’s now a Coronavirus hotspot and the explanation is again rooted in the city’s meatpacking industry.
While Americans everywhere are eager to pretend that the virus is under control, the situation in Wisconsin is getting precarious. According to the state’s Department of Health Services, a total of 920 people in Brown County — where Green Bay is located — have tested positive for Covid-19, up 603 from a week ago. The infection rate in the county is 3.54 cases per 1,000 residents — the highest in the state. By point of comparison, in Dane County, where the capital city of Madison is located, the rate is just .79 per 1,000.
The explanation for that disparity is simple: Dane County is, for the most part, a middle-class region. Residents work predominantly for the state government, its legal apparatus, the huge University of Wisconsin and the technology sector. Brown County, in contrast, is working class, with the meat packing industry a big employer. As we’ve already seen (if we’ve been paying attention) this virus is particularly cruel to the working class.
Americans are huge consumers of meat. They eat 124 kilos per person per year, which puts them near the top of the league table of carnivores. Among major countries, only Denmark and New Zealand consume more. Americans aren’t about to let a pandemic get in the way of their meat consumption — especially not with the barbecue season heating up. That demand for meat has placed a great strain on the processing industry — and particularly its workers.
Earlier this month, one of the largest pork-producing plants in the US — Tyson Foods of Sioux Falls, South Dakota — closed indefinitely because nearly 300 of its employees had tested positive for Coronavirus. That was the first real hint of worrisome trend. Last week Smithfields, a huge pork processor, temporarily closed two plants because of the virus. At one plant, which employs nearly 4,000 largely Hispanic workers, almost 900 people were infected.
The spike in Brown County has been linked to JBS Packerland, a meat industry plant in Green Bay. Infectious disease experts have found that meat processing plants have become hot spots because employees have to work in close quarters, making social distancing impossible. Wet animal carcasses are passed from person to person along the production line, acting as conduits for the disease. The workforce at these plants is made up largely of recently arrived Hispanic immigrants who live in crowded housing. Throw in the language barrier, and it’s easy to see why controlling the spread of the virus within the packing industry is extremely difficult.
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SubscribeVery insightful article, many thanks.
So it’s Trump’s fault that the United States operates an open door policy for cheap immigrant labour, reducing safety standards for workers?
Ok, then.
American reader here and I agree. If we tied our healthcare payments to BMI levels, we would have a new world over here. I am not a Vegetarian, but made a huge shift to “Forks Over Knives” lifestyle, and it works. 20+ pounds vanished. Now if I could work on that red wine consumption… Work in process.
Just fact checking 124kg per per person per year is 12 onzs a day per person (3/4ths of a pound). Seems a big average even for our American friends. Is some of this meat wasted or eaten by other animals. Does consumed mean actually eaten by a person or has it a wider meaning?
Unfortunately, statistics are thrown at us all the time, and in the process often misused by mistake or deliberately to prove a point. I have no idea about this 124kg, but without an explanation or source, one is left free to believe it or not (but I am intrigued to learn that Danes and New Zealanders may out-eat US citizens). I am often irritated to read that ‘one in five of us’ or something similar, only to read at the end that it is based on a tiny sample chosen with doubtful randomness or statistical selection, or on a question with a wide degree of meaning or time.
An excellent article. Thank you. The argument can be extended beyond the borders of both the meat packing industry and the United States to include all key workers in all nations including our own that have prioritised supply chains over workers’ health.
We knew from the outset of the pandemic that key workers were being sacrificed in order to ensure we could still buy 35 different types of pasta in our supermarkets and our Amazon deliveries still came through. Certain groups such as London bus drivers were found to be 100 times more likely to die from Covid 19 than the average middle class person working from home.
This is not an American issue. It is not even a political issue. It is an issue of humanity. As a society we just do not care about these people. Until we admit that to ourselves there will be no pressure on governments to do anything about it.