Americans love sausage and bacon.
We consider it almost a civil right to have access
to abundant low-cost protein supplies.
Some of the same factors
that make the meat supply chain so efficient
and profitable are also helping fuel devastating outbreaks
of a novel coronavirus.
And according to the US' largest supplier,
that supply chain is breaking.
More meat processing plants in the Midwest are closing,
and that could impact our food supply.
There are growing concerns about food shortages.
So far, over 10,000 workers have been infected
or exposed to COVID-19, and at least 30 have died.
Our members are getting sick, and they're dying.
Worker safety and health
in this pandemic is really in crisis.
A lot of us were getting scared,
knowing that if we didn't show up for work,
we might not have a job.
An executive order signed by President Trump
declares meat processing plants as critical infrastructure.
If the administration wants to protect the food chain,
what they really need to do is to protect the health,
the safety of the workers in that industry.
If American consumers are to continue
to enjoy cheap and plentiful meat,
processing companies will have to navigate a fragile balance
of safety and supply.
Before we talk about what's happening
inside these processing plants,
it's important to understand their place
in the supply chain for meat in the United States.
Farmers raise livestock
to a certain weight and size measurement
so that they can sell them to meat processors.
And at these processing plants,
factory workers will often kill the animal,
break it down into different cuts,
and package it to the end product.
That is then transportable for your local grocery store
and other food service areas like restaurants
or catering companies.
And it's the efficiency and scale of this meat production
in the United States that allow prices to be kept so low.
So when some processing centers had to slow down production,
and in a few cases shut down entirely,
All of a sudden, we have a big bottleneck
of animals with nowhere to go.
In some instances, we've seen farmers
that have had to start calling animals
because there's just nowhere to send their pigs.
We'll end up having to euthanize either baby pigs
or even market hogs on that end
'cause there's just simply nowhere to go with them.
And that bottleneck in these processing centers
means that grocery stores
in some areas may see a reduced amount of supply.
At the same time, these stores are seeing an increase
in demand with restaurants closing
and people eating in more often.
It instills a lot of fear in consumers
and ultimately in voters to have that right
to affordable low-cost meat threatened.
But ramping production back up
in these processing plants
and ensuring safe conditions for workers is challenging
for the same reasons that normally make them so efficient,
their size and the speed at which they operate.
Let's start with their size.
What we've seen, the coronavirus pandemic,
is kind of highlight this industry concentration.
A handful of very, very large companies control the bulk
of Americans' meat supply.
So, you have Tyson, JBS, and Cargill
that account for about 2/3 of America's beef.
And the large bulk of it is produced in a few dozen plants.
From the late '60s until now, we've seen about a 70% decline
in just the number of slaughterhouses that exist.
This industry consolidation has meant
that while there are fewer plants,
each plant processes far more meat than ever before.
And even a single plant shutdown can have an impact
on the overall supply.
When just one Smithfield plant in South Dakota shut down,
it reduced pork supply in the country by four to 5%.
The other side of their size
is just how many people work in these plants.
Some of these plants are very large.
There's thousands of employees.
It's just the nature of this sort of work.
A lot of industries obviously rely on automation.
And in pork and beef slaughterhouses,
it's not really like that.
You still have a lot of hands-on labor.
It can be up to 2,000 workers on a shift.
They crowd into break rooms.
They crowd into locker rooms.
They all punch-in around the same time
using the same clocks.
It's loud in these facilities,
so workers have to get really close together
to hear each other.
These plants have workers
working shoulder-to-shoulder
in every single department.
And that brings us to the speed
of these facilities.
By now you've probably noticed just how closely some
of these workers are to one another.
The reason for that is largely
to allow the production line to move faster.
The more hands along the line allows the belt
to move at a faster rate
and therefore deliver more meat at the end of the day.
And it's really physically demanding work,
and the pace of the line goes so fast
that workers rarely have time to go to the bathroom
because their job is to get the meat out.
In order to put space between the workers,
they have to slow down the line speeds.
In order to create a safer environment
and manage these multiple threats,
they have to slow down the line speeds.
With a potential for reduced line speeds
and large factories still slowly coming back online,
returning processing to full capacity
may be a difficult task for sometime.
And between growing pressure from farmers
who have nowhere to take their livestock
and executives warning of a looming supply shortage,
the government stepped in.
Facing fears of a nation wide meat shortage
President Trump signed an executive order today
to keep processing plants open, despite safety concerns.
We just worked with the meat processors.
They're thrilled, and that whole bottleneck is broken up.
But labor groups fear
that ramping plants up too quickly
can mean workers will continue to be put at risk.
Well, companies have been very clear
that they have been taking steps to protect workers.
So, they've done things like increase sanitation,
space out breaks.
They're offering PPE, protective gear like masks.
We remain committed to our employees during this time,
and we're implementing many changes
to assist our team members.
We have enhanced the cleaning and disinfection,
our frequently-touched objects and surfaces.
And we're continuing to stress the importance
of personal hygiene.
Measuring temperatures as they come through the door,
face coverings, staggered breaks, expanded room,
social distancing,
all of these are designed to help keep our workers safe.
Keeping our workers safe
is what will keep our plants running.
But currently companies face
no outside enforcement of these safety measures.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
instead of issuing very clear guidance
and recommendations on what employers need to do
to protect workers,
they watered it down so it says if possible, consider this,
in almost every sentence
so that it doesn't really give employers any mandates.
So, there's just a lot going on
that shields companies from responsibility,
pressures them to keep production up,
and disempowers workers.
You know, I am a meat eater.
I love bacon and breakfast sausage and all of it.
We have to, we bacon-loving consumers
have to adapt to the near-term reality
of some lower volumes of meat, higher costs of meat.
And we have to be willing as consumers to accept that.
We're not facing severe food shortages right now.
What could drive severe food shortages longterm
is if we're reckless,
if the companies and the management
of these companies is reckless about the health
and wellbeing of workers.