#meatpackers

By Stephen Millies

Donald Trump celebrated Workers’ Memorial Day on April 28 by ordering dangerously unsafe meatpacking and poultry plants to remain open.

(via How meatpackers at a Hormel Foods plant launched a worldwide SPAM boycott : Planet Money : NPR)

Hormel Foods, which makes SPAM, provided jobs at its meatpacking plants to families in Austin, Minnesota for generations. And for a time, a job as a meatpacker at the Hormel Foods plant was a ticket to a sustainable, middle-class life. However, wage cuts and tougher working conditions led to a bitter union strike in the 1980s. Today, we revisit the time when about 1500 meatpackers captured the world's attention and tried to turn back an inevitable tide.

Food Week September 6 -12, 2021

Happy weekend and welcome to Food Week September 6. High priced meat and high growth plant-based. Which cities are experiencing restaurant recovery and which aren’t. Why nutrition is always changing. And should you tiki? It’s all in there. MACRO Food week September 6 finds the US is the worst country among the G7 for vaccination rates. As a result, Biden has decided to up the ante. The…

Safe Line Speeds During COVID-19 Act Reintroduced

The Safe Line Speeds During COVID-19 Act has been reintroduced by U.S. Senator Cory Booker and Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Bennie Thompson. Primarily, the legislation will eliminate line speed waivers issued to meatpacking plants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Booker explained that meatpacking plants have been a significant source of COVID-19 infections, in part due to…

By Stephen Millies

The biggest hotspots in the United States for the coronavirus are prisons and slaughterhouses. Around 2,237 inmates at California’s San Quentin prison have caught the virus. Twenty-six of them have died.

At least 203 meatpacking workers have died of COVID-19, while 42,534 meatpacking workers in 494 plants have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Just as the prisons are filled with Black, Indigenous and Latinx people, so are the meatpacking and poultry plants. Seven out of every eight meatpacking employees who have tested positive for COVID-19 are workers of color and/or immigrants.

The springtime surge of COVID-19 throughout the meat and poultry industry frightened the dead animal capitalists. Not because workers were dying but because they might be forced to to make their factories safe.

President Trump came to their rescue. He issued an executive order on April 28 keeping the packing plants open, citing the Defense Production Act.

Meat Institute Works with OSHA to Protect Workers

The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have entered into an alliance to increase safety in the meat sector. Through the two-year agreement, NAMI will be providing informational resources and guidance on coronavirus safety to its members in the meatpacking and processing industry as well as the public.