Counties With Meat Plants Have Double Amount of COVID Cases

Meatpacking plants have joined nursing homes and prisons as hot spots of COVID-19 cases, and the infections are affecting the surrounding communities as well. It's one more way that the industrial model of food production that's permeated the U.S. is failing and, rather than supplying healthy food for the public, is causing environmental destruction and disease.

In an April 2020 report, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that COVID-19 cases among U.S. workers in 115 meat and poultry processing facilities were reported by 19 states. The facilities employ approximately 130,000 workers and have seen 4,913 cases and 20 deaths.

"Factors potentially affecting risk for infection include difficulties with workplace physical distancing and hygiene and crowded living and transportation conditions," the CDC noted.¹ An analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) further revealed that counties containing meatpacking plants, or located within 15 miles of one, are also facing an above-average number of COVID-19 infections.²

Nearly Double the COVID-19 Infections in Meatpacking Counties

Using cases reported by Johns Hopkins University, EWG revealed that, as of May 6, 2020, counties with meatpacking plants, or within a 15-mile radius, reported 373 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, which is close to double the U.S. average of 199 cases per 100,000. EWG reported:³

"Meat plant outbreaks are among the largest drivers of the recent eight-fold growth in COVID-19 cases in rural America. Before [meat plants were ordered to remain open on April 28] … at least 30 plants temporarily closed to address their outbreaks, although most have remained open without pause. In at least one state, the governor overrode public health officials to force a plant to remain open."

A Bloomberg analysis also revealed that, during the week after the order that meatpacking plants remain open, cases of COVID-19 increased 40% in counties with major meat slaughterhouses compared to a 19% rise across the U.S.⁴ While such counties represent just 7.5% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 10% of new COVID-19 cases and were described as new hot spots in the mostly rural areas.

Neighboring communities are also at risk, because while the average U.S. commute is 15 miles one way, many meat plant workers likely travel much farther to get to work. "… [B]ecause the 15-mile radius around meatpacking plants often crosses county or state lines, seemingly isolated case clusters not only endanger one community but can also spread the virus to neighboring counties or states," EWG noted.⁵

As an example, EWG cited Dakota City, Nebraska, which is home to Tyson Foods. The plant reported 669 cases on April 30, 2020, but the seven counties that are located in a 15-mile radius of Dakota City have an average of 1,000 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. Worse still are the counties that are near more than one meatpacking plant, "creating a deadly Venn diagram with overlapping zones of potential plant-linked infections."⁶

Tama, Black Hawk and Marshall counties in central Iowa, which have three meatpacking plants, have an average of 1,483 cases per 100,000 residents — more than seven times the U.S. national average.

Consolidation Leads to Rises in COVID-19 and Meat Shortages

Tyson, JBS USA, Smithfield Foods and Cargill Inc. control the majority of U.S. meat and poultry, most of which are processed in a limited number of large plants. Because the processing is concentrated into a small number of large facilities, a U.S. government statement noted, "[C]losure of any of these plants could disrupt our food supply and detrimentally impact our hardworking farmers and ranchers."⁷

While the move to keep meat and poultry processing plants open was met with criticism from unions calling for increased protections for workers in the cramped conditions, the government cited statistics that closing one large beef processing plant could lead to a loss of more than 10 million servings of beef in a day.

Further they noted that closing one processing plant can eliminate more than 80% of the supply of a given meat product, such as ground beef, to an entire grocery store chain.⁸ It's unknown just how many COVID-19 infections have occurred among the more than 500,000 workers employed by the approximately 7,600 slaughter and processing facilities in North America.⁹

Some states and counties are not releasing information about which facilities have cases. Even the workers at some facilities have been kept in the dark as outbreaks occurred. EWG reported, however:

"According to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, as of May 12, there have been at least 12,500 reported COVID-19 cases tied to meatpacking facilities in at least 180 plants in 31 states. As of May 12, the Food and Environment Reporting Network's map of all meat and food processing plant COVID-19 outbreaks shows infections of 13,342 meat industry workers."¹⁰

EWG also reported the meatpacking plants with the most COVID-19 cases, with the top 10 as follows:¹¹

Company	Location	Infected Workers	Confirmed Cases in Counties Within 15 Miles	Share of Confirmed County Cases From Nearby Facility Outbreaks
Tyson Foods	Logansport, Indiana	900	1,963	45.8%
Smithfield Foods	Sioux Falls, South Dakota	800	2,409	33.2%
Tyson Foods	Perry, Iowa	730	683	100%
Tyson Foods	Dakota City, Nebraska	669	2,386	28.0%
Tyson Foods	Waterloo, Iowa	444	1,826	24.3%
Triumph Foods	St. Joseph, Missouri	422	442	95.5%
JBS	Worthington, Minnesota	350	1,133	30.9%
JBS	Green Bay, Wisconsin	300	1,697	17.7%
Tyson Foods	Goodlettsville, Tennessee	298	4,221	7.1%
Cargill	Dodge City, Kansas	288	875	32.9%

CAFOs Killing Off Unprecedented Number of Animals

The problems caused by consolidation in the meat industry are perhaps no more apparent than to the farmers left with hundreds of thousands of animals quickly growing too large for slaughter, and nowhere to send them. Farmers with large pig farms are being particularly hard hit, although egg and poultry farmers have also been affected.

If slaughterhouses close, the farmers have nowhere to send their animals, and with a new, younger group waiting to replace them, have no room to spare. Across the U.S., farmers are being forced to gas, lethally inject or shoot food animals in the head, a waste of meat during a time when many are struggling to find food, and a sentence that's causing emotional damage to farmers.

"The economic part of it is damaging," Steve Meyer, a pork industry analyst, told The New York Times. "But the emotional and psychological and spiritual impact of this will have much longer consequences."¹² The mental turmoil is also giving way to another environmental problem — what to do with all the dead bodies. The Times reported:¹³

"In recent weeks, animal health officials in Minnesota have leased plots of land as large as 100 acres to create composting sites for hogs. Each day, farmers arrive in trucks to unload the remains of their pigs. Then a cleanup crew puts the carcasses into a wood chipper.

So far, the state has composted more than 5,000 pig carcasses across two locations, and it plans to establish up to three more disposal sites in the coming weeks, said Michael Crusan, a spokesman for the Board of Animal Health.

Farmers, who spend about $130 to raise each pig, pay to transport the carcasses to the disposal sites, where the state covers the cost of composting. Some farmers who have had to cull large numbers of animals have lost as much as $390,000 in a single day."

Meat Inspectors Spreading Disease

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is tasked with conducting inspections on U.S. meat supplies. This requires inspectors to travel to slaughterhouses, processing plants and other facilities across the U.S.

FSIS inspectors speaking to Government Executive criticized the agency's handling of the inspection process during the pandemic, detailing unsafe working practices that are likely contributing to the spread of disease.¹⁴ Prior to April 2020, multiple inspectors said they were prohibited from wearing masks during inspections because it would create fear in the facilities.

Reports have emerged of potential disruptions to the food supply chain as meat plants, including facilities in Greeley, Colorado, and Columbus Junction, Iowa, closed due to COVID-19 outbreaks among employees and federal inspectors. However, prior to the closure, as inspectors in Greeley fell ill, the USDA sent another round of inspectors to the plant to supplement the workforce there.

FSIS also relocated employees from a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Smithfield plant that closed to a facility in Waterloo, Iowa, where inspectors were also testing positive for COVID-19. While inspectors questioned the strategy of moving employees potentially exposed to COVID-19 from one hot zone to the next, FSIS told inspectors to keep working, even if they'd been exposed, as long as they had not yet developed symptoms.¹⁵

FSIS has not revealed how many inspectors have contracted COVID-19, but Buck McKay, an FSIS spokesperson, stated that "ensuring the U.S. supply chain remains strong is [the agency's] top priority."¹⁶

'The Sickness in Our Food Supply'

In an article titled "The Sickness in Our Food Supply,"¹⁷ author Michael Pollan succinctly sums up many of the problems facing the food supply, and how they've now been thrust into the spotlight due to COVID-19. Americans, for the first time in decades, have been faced with empty grocery store shelves and meat shortages.

In May 2020 Costco began limiting the amount of meat each shopper could purchase, while Kroger warned customers that it could soon have limited inventory.¹⁸ The problem, however, isn't a shortage of food but problems with distribution and breaks in the supply chain.

Adding insult to injury, the foods that the industrialized food system promotes, including heavily processed junk foods, are those that contribute to the chronic diseases that make people most at risk from severe COVID-19 infection. And some of the most questionable practices of all, like the massive planting of corn and soybean crops, are likely to be unscathed by the pandemic. Pollan wrote:¹⁹

"The pandemic is, willy-nilly, making the case for deindustrializing and decentralizing the American food system, breaking up the meat oligopoly, ensuring that food workers have sick pay and access to health care, and pursuing policies that would sacrifice some degree of efficiency in favor of much greater resilience.

Somewhat less obviously, the pandemic is making the case not only for a different food system but for a radically different diet as well.

It's long been understood that an industrial food system built upon a foundation of commodity crops like corn and soybeans leads to a diet dominated by meat and highly processed food. Most of what we grow in this country is not food exactly, but rather feed for animals and the building blocks from which fast food, snacks, soda, and all the other wonders of food processing, such as high-fructose corn syrup, are manufactured.

While some sectors of agriculture are struggling during the pandemic, we can expect the corn and soybean crop to escape more or less unscathed. That's because it takes remarkably little labor—typically a single farmer on a tractor, working alone—to plant and harvest thousands of acres of these crops. So processed foods should be the last kind to disappear from supermarket shelves.

Unfortunately, a diet dominated by such foods (as well as lots of meat and little in the way of vegetables or fruit—the so-called Western diet) predisposes us to obesity and chronic diseases such as hypertension and type-2 diabetes. These 'underlying conditions' happen to be among the strongest predictors that an individual infected with Covid-19 will end up in the hospital with a severe case of the disease …"

Support the PRIME Act

Under current government regulations, the USDA, not individual states, has control over how meat is processed. Small livestock producers are forced to drive long distances to have their animals slaughtered at slaughterhouses that meet federal inspection standards — the same slaughterhouses that are now being shut down because the giant facilities are breeding grounds for disease.

Small, custom slaughterhouses are not permitted to sell any of their meat to grocery stores, schools or restaurants, even though it could now prove to be a lifeline to states.

The Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act, introduced by Representative Thomas Massie, R-Ky., would allow farmers to sell meat processed at these smaller slaughtering facilities and allow states to set their own meat processing standards.

Because small slaughterhouses do not have an inspector on staff, a requirement that only large facilities can easily fulfill, they're banned from selling their meat. The PRIME Act would lift this regulation without sacrificing safety, as random USDA inspections could still occur.²⁰

Massie stated that the shutting down of meat processing plants is driving the euthanizing of animals that may lead to shortages in the supermarket, including a shortage of beef by the fall. "Let those small meat processors fill in the gaps so that we don't have the dangerous situation where we're euthanizing animals instead of providing them as food. My bill would allow that to happen," he stated.²¹

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