Price of dinner can have a high cost
Amidst all the fear and suffering the COVID-19 pandemic has brought, it’s not without stories that affirm humanity: health-care workers who risk their health and even their lives for others, essential workers (some of them among the lowest-paid of Canadian workers) who show up every day to keep our world functioning quasi-normally.
Small acts of kindness and caring you see on a small scale every day: people who cross the street ahead of time to make sure you have physical distance, signs in windows and chalk messages drawn on driveways.
But there are also signs that, when it comes to humanity, money matters more.
Tuesday was one of those days. I’ll explain why.
The working conditions in North American meat processing plants, to put it bluntly, are not suited to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus. The plants are peopleintensive, operate at close quarters — literally should to shoulder — and provide limited protections from airborne infection.
And there have been COVID-19 outbreaks traced to many of them. One of the largest clusters of COVID-19 infections in the entire United States has been traced back to the Smithfield pork processing plant near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In all, 3,700 employees work at the facility — by midApril, 644 cases of COVID-19 had been directly linked to workers at the plant. That was 55 per cent of the entire state’s cases. Now, the number’s at more than 850 cases.
And it’s not just Smithfield. Another meatpacking plant in Colorado closed after 103 cases among staff and five deaths. An Iowa plant saw a cluster of more than 200 cases and two deaths. At least 15 U.S. plants have closed for periods of time because of COVID-19 outbreaks.
In Canada, there are equally startling numbers. In Alberta, there were, as of Wednesday, 759 confirmed cases among meatpacking plant employees working at the Cargill plant in High River, Alta., and another 249 confirmed cases — and at least two deaths — at a JBS meatpacking plant in Brooks, Alta. Those two cases are the largest Canadian outbreaks of the virus.
At the same time, maintaining the food supply chain is critical for North America. If plants shut down, not only does meat stop flowing into the North American marketplace, but farmers have to stop raising animals for slaughter. In the U.S., plant shutdowns have already caused farmers to cull herds.
So you can understand why, on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order using the Defense Production Act to ensure that packing plants continue to operate.
If the reason for the order was solely to maintain the integrity of the food system for American citizens — along with mandating increased protection and safety for workers — you could clearly understand the rationale. Both of those factors were, in fact, elements in the order, but even Trump admits they weren’t the only reason.
The executive order, he said, “will solve any liability problems where they had certain liability problems and we’ll be in very good shape. It was a very unique circumstance, because of liability.”
Government officials said the executive order was put together after consultations with and input from senior executives in the meatpacking industry. I’ll bet.
Fact is, it won’t actually extinguish liability — just financial liability.
Plant operators will still be liable for any pain and suffering brought about by more COVID-19 cases.
They just won’t have to pay for it. The message is pretty clear.
Today is International Workers Day.
It is 2020, and people can still be worked to death to bring us our dinner.
Yum.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in SaltWire newspapers and websites across Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at russell.wangersky@ thetelegram.com — Twitter: @ wangersky.