[Fries]

Going back to meat production, we have heard from the UK and Australia. Have meat packing plants in other parts of the world closed due to COVID-19 spread within the facilities, which has happened in Iowa.

The packing plants here have installed plexiglass dividers between workers individual stations. Workers are now required to wear masks. They are attempting to do distancing in the breakrooms, but I am not sure how that could even work. The packing companies reacted slowly here in the U.S.A. and the food supply is adversely affected.

I am hopeful the new safety measures will make a difference. Anyone else care to chime in how meat production has been affected in your corner of the world?

I found one case in the Netherlands where 20 romanian people were infected in a slaugtherhouse in Scherpenzeel. The responsabele inspection noted that working conditions were good and the way the workforce is housed probably is to blame. Low wage laborers from abroad are often housed together which has been a problem in more nations.

[swanlefitte]

. The malodorous stench of the packing plant was the smell of money. That's what my dad would say.

It was burned oats in Cedar Rapids. Home to a mjor Quaker Oats plant. I had to visit relatives there and always dreaded it. That smell and chain smoking relatives made me hate that yearly journey. I much preferred pig farms, don't know about a plant though.

[mroeder75]

It was burned oats in Cedar Rapids. Home to a mjor Quaker Oats plant. I had to visit relatives there and always dreaded it. That smell and chain smoking relatives made me hate that yearly journey. I much preferred pig farms, don't know about a plant though.

The Quaker Oats odor is not pleasant, and the odor from the General Mills and ADM plants are probably all mixed together. The odor from Quaker Oats is worth it when you consider that odor plays a role in the production of Cap'n Crunch's Peanut Butter Crunch. I could live without Peanut Butter Crunch, but life is much better with it.

[sbh]

When I was a kid growing up in Dubuque one of the principal employers was the Dubuque Pack. They produced the highest quality meats. Lots of my childhood friends' fathers worked there. They made a good living. The malodorous stench of the packing plant was the smell of money. That's what my dad would say.

In the 1980s it all changed in Iowa with meat packing industry consolidations, development by companies of excess plant capacity that allowed the companies to move operations if they were not satisfied with their union contract, and reopen elsewhere without a union, then they would sell the first plant to another meat packing company who would reopen the original facility without a union, driving down the cost of labor. The good companies, in fairness to them could no longer compete, with the cutthroats, so the practice spread even to a company like the Dubuque Pack, which had the largest hog processing plant in the U.S.A. in the 1970s. The plant, and the company played that game for a while but they could not keep up and no longer exist. The plants started importing immigrant labor, some of them properly documented, other immigrants with fake documents. Sorry for that rant.

I didn't realize meat packing companies used immigrant labor in Germany as well.

Afaik it's a world wide phenomenon in the meat industry.

Those cutthroat strategies of underpayment and mass layoffs are a lethal virus invented and cultivated in the 80s and 90s and even called good practice in business management circles. Today it's a desease we can't get rid of quick enough. But we rely on the new generation who are bold enough to question what those former leaders have established. Current CEOs still follow those methods blindly for their personal short term bonuses. Sorry for that rant.

[Wheatfield]

Tough to make blanket statements. States like Ohio, California, and Virginia have been locked down since March 15th. States like Montana and Idaho haven't seen much either -- probably due to the fact that they are really sparsely populated.

There is always a way of quibbling out. However, without a solid national response, all that will happen is the problem will jump from place to place with nothing to stop it. A patchwork response is doomed to fail when a problem that has no respect for borders comes knocking on a country's door.

[mroeder75]

I found one case in the Netherlands where 20 romanian people were infected in a slaugtherhouse in Scherpenzeel. The responsabele inspection noted that working conditions were good and the way the workforce is housed probably is to blame. Low wage laborers from abroad are often housed together which has been a problem in more nations.

I am curious since the meat packing plant problem has been so bad here, and since Iowa's governor today identified yet another plant in Iowa that has an outbreak, if the "good" working conditions in the Netherlands look like these conditions in Nebraska: http://foodchainworkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/nebraska-meat-packing510.jpg Or, is meat processing done differently in Europe?

[GUB]

I think there might be a little deliberate blindness going on with some people.

Could you elaborate on why you have linked this comment to my post?

[Serkevan]

Afaik it's a world wide phenomenon in the meat industry.

Those cutthroat strategies of underpayment and mass layoffs are a lethal virus invented and cultivated in the 80s and 90s and even called good practice in business management circles. Today it's a desease we can't get rid of quick enough. But we rely on the new generation who are bold enough to question what those former leaders have established. Current CEOs still follow those methods blindly for their personal short term bonuses. Sorry for that rant.

Typical for other types of work as well; UK, Spain and Germany have problems with produce going to waste on the fields, because cheap immigrant labour wasn't available and they obviously couldn't pay a wage to nationals that justified the extenuating work.


Curiously, at least in Spain those who complained overlap quite a lot with the demographic that rails against immigration because "they come to take our jobs".

[timb64]

Typical for other types of work as well; UK, Spain and Germany have problems with produce going to waste on the fields, because cheap immigrant labour wasn't available and they obviously couldn't pay a wage to nationals that justified the extenuating work.


Curiously, at least in Spain those who complained overlap quite a lot with the demographic that rails against immigration because "they come to take our jobs".

I can confirm this was a problem locally to me in the East of the U.K. Farmers advertised for workers to pick asparagus from the fields and whilst they initially got take up after a day or so local workers couldn't physically cope with the task.One solution has been agencies flying in workers from Romania!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/17/british-workers-reject-f...in-coronavirus

[Wheatfield]

Could you elaborate on why you have linked this comment to my post?

I'd actually replied to Sandy Hancock.

[GUB]

I'd actually replied to Sandy Hancock.

Oh so no reference to my post intended then. That is good.

[beholder3]

On this page (sorry the text is in German, but I think the graphs can be read by anyone) there is a pretty good graph titled "Infektionsverläufe im Vergleich" somewhat down 1/3 of the page:
Zahlen zum Coronavirus: Die Pandemie im Überblick
It does show how the virus spreads in countries calculated as infected per 100,000 citizens.

It is pretty obvious from the form of the curves where the contagion is somewhat under control (the curve flattens) and where the outbreak is still in full swing (straight upward infection of the population) or even in exponential startup phase gaining more speed every day.

[Rondec]

I've been watching Georgia and Florida pretty closely since they have started opening businesses again and fortunately, there hasn't been a surge -- at least not yet. I am cautiously optimistic that people are being careful and figuring out how to do activities without spreading the virus. Coronavirus cases aren't surging in high-risk states - Axios Axios shows both states dropping number of cases by 12 to 14 percent in the last week. We'll see -- considering the incubation period, this coming week may be the one to really watch.

Just to the whole "country wide policy" thing, I do think it is really tough to do that in a country the size of the United States. Different areas peak at different times. I look at Virginia and the numbers don't look great here, but in my county there have been 13 cases and no new cases added in the last week. Lynchburg has added about 15 cases in the last week. The main driver of the new cases is Northern Virginia -- Fairfax County, Alexandria, etc. The governor decided to split the state and lift restrictions on most, but keep them in place for northern Virginia. That really does make sense to me, but once again in a couple of weeks we'll see where things are at. Much will be on individual citizens willingness to continue social distancing on their own -- when you live in a really rural area, there is no police enforcement of such policies.

[Digitalis]

I believe he is saying that this is an ugly contest in which everyone is a loser, simply by participating.

[Serkevan]

A country-wide response is difficult to do in any country; as you mention Virginia already split the state and we've seen similar stuff happening in Spain and Germany (each Land had a different response depending on the gravity of the situation, we seem to have avoided the worst in Saxony). There are, I think, things that should be done at a national (or in the case of Europe, even supra-national) level in terms of economic relief, healthcare reinforcement and other "macro" (hah) level governmental responses*, but the management of the lockdowns and specific measures to be taken to reduce the impact of the pandemic cannot be optimized for large areas.


*For example, guidelines for the level and nature of restrictions (with criteria for population density, local prevalence of the virus, etc.) CAN and should be drafted by the central governments as they are better positioned to concentrate the expert advice of epidemiologists, logistics managers and people with other relevant expertise.