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The Meat and Food Supply Breakdown Produced in partnership with
The Coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the health, environmental and human cost of our meat packing facilities — and heralded a call for an even stronger plant-based food supply Produced in partnership with
By Robert Yehling One of the biggest tragedies of our tragic battle against Coronavirus occurred within the nation’s massive network of meat packing facilities. When Smithfield’s Sioux Falls, SD facility announced in April hundreds of positive cases, shut down for 2 ½ weeks of deep cleaning, and then announced hundreds of thousands of animals were being slaughtered weekly because they couldn’t be processed, a whole slew of issues spilled into the public eye. Produced in partnership with
Photo: iStockphoto/dangarneau
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SUSTAINABILITY TODAY | SPRING 2020
The first was the fickleness of our national food supply chain itself. The meat packing plants were already stressed because of a run on meat and dairy products by panicked buyers when the Coronavirus lockdown began. Companies struggled to process more food to be distributed, in overcrowded worker conditions far from hygienic, where social distancing was a pipe dream. Not surprisingly, they were hit by waves of positive Coronavirus
cases from coast to coast — hundreds per plant, in some cases. Many plants closed down to deep clean, for days to weeks, throwing down the second nail on the food supply. Suddenly, meat, dairy and cheese products shot up 25% or more — if you could find them. Worse, farmers were forced to slaughter millions of animals over a month-long span, which will be felt in the food supply in the coming months.
