Covid Journal, April 19, 2020

In keeping with the food theme, I came across this story about the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield’s in South Dakota. It’s owned by a Chinese company called WH Group Ltd. To be honest, I struggle with the connectiona and resist the idea of implying anything.

This is a story about how management resists recommendations to improve the safety of a work environment.

Hundreds of cases of Coivd were eventually recorded, but there’s no word yet on whether or not the meat would be recalled, even though the plany has now been shut down.

The closure will likely result in a shock to the price of pork (and other meat as a result).

It raises so many questions about the sustainability of our food system:

• Consolidation of important products (not necessarily for vegans, I suppose) into the hands of a few actors. This reduces diversification and results in price shocks for the product(s) in question.
• Heavy reliance on migrant workers.
• Refusal to act on any recommendations to protect the health of employees.

It ultimately begs the question: how many more products are there like Smithfield’s that we should be wary of? In Canada, we know there were issues with Maple Leaf Foods several years back. These problems came shortly after Stephen Harper cut the number of health inspectors and transferred control of a massive, centralized food producer into the hands of the ownership.

The shorter we make the chain, the strong we’ll be.

Now’s a perfect time to localize food production centres.