How the Meat Industry Gets Away With Prioritizing Profits Over People
A new ProPublica report shows the behind the scenes of how slaughterhouses were designated as ‘essential’ amidst a worsening pandemic
In unsurprising but infuriating news: Corporate oligarchs appear to have essentially drafted the federal government’s order that overrode worker protections and state health departments, ensuring the literal death of their workers and those workers loved ones.
In the Texas Panhandle, refugees and other workers at plants have been struggling with outbreaks for months, with employees saying “everybody” is getting sick. In Kansas, meatpacking plants are the center of the epidemic. And meanwhile, as ProPublica reports:
In June, the Bear River Health Department in northern Utah, where nearly 400 JBS workers have tested positive for COVID-19, told the press it couldn’t shut the plant down because of the executive order.
In Virginia, state health officials had initially recommended that poultry companies close their plants for two weeks, “allowing deep cleaning and allowing symptomatic and asymptomatic infected workers to run their course of disease and recover,” records obtained under a separate public records request show. But the state…
