South Dakota Top Blogs

News, notes, and observations from the James River Valley in northern South Dakota with special attention to reviewing the performance of the media--old and new. E-Mail to MinneKota@gmail.com

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Is there Covid-19 in your steak?

The largest and most frequent clusters of Covid-19 are occurring in meat processing plants.  Many have been closed, but a presidential order has been issued to keep them open.  The only factor offered so far as to why meat plants are such collectors and transmitters of the coronavirus is that the workers have to work in such close proximity to each other that the virus rapidly passes from one person to the other.  The question that occurs to most people but is seldom addressed in the press accounts is if the meat is involved in the propagation of the disease.

Back in 1906, a novel exposed the meat industry and produced some massive changes.  Upton Sinclair's The Jungle portrayed the horrible conditions under which immigrants were exploited in Chicago meat packing plants.  That was Sinclair's major concern in writing the book.  But he also described the unsanitary conditions and the tainted meat being produced.  Reader's were more affected by the depiction of contaminated meat than by the exploitive labor practices, so that the book's major consequence was the legislation that produced the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.  It also brought about some labor reform in the industry, but working conditions did not improve significantly until workers organized and made them part of their union contracts with the meat packers.

The coronavirus pandemic has put societal focus on the meat packers again, and it appears that they have reverted to some of the conditions and practices that Sinclair had exposed.   The purity of the meat is not an issue in the current concerns, but the treatment of the workers is.  One worker said of his employers to USA Today,  Those people don’t care about us. If you die, they’ll just replace you tomorrow.”   But the question lingers if something as pervasive as Covid-19 that has shut down much of the world can infect the meat.

The Center for Disease Control claims, "Currently there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food."

The Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for meat inspections, makes a similar claim:  "We are not aware of any reports at this time of human illnesses that suggest COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging."

Both agencies state that they have no evidence of food contamination at this time, but make no statements of whether they are intensifying their inspection efforts which might find some problems.  However, the purity of the meat is not as prominent an issue as the working conditions.  A number of states, with the backing of GOP leaders, have issued warnings to workers that if they do not return to work, their unemployment benefits will be canceled.  Trump has issued an executive order requiring that packing plants stay open, despite the fact that they are major hot spots for Covid-19 infections and worker deaths.  Worker unions agree with the worker quoted above that their well-being is not much of a consideration by Trump or their employers.

Workers are not valued.  The responsible agencies advise that they have no evidence at this time of coronavirus in the meat, but you should cook the hell out of it just in case.  But it does look as if the meat industry has returned to The Jungle.


[For a detailed perspective on the meat packing industry,  read the South Dakota News Watch.]









1 comment:

Eve Fisher said...

It never LEFT "The Jungle." It's always been the slaughter of innocents, both behind and in front of the knife.
(Spoken by a meat eater, btw.)

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