The US isn’t alone in grappling with COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants.
Angela Merkel on Wednesday described incoming reports from the German meat industry as “terrible”, and said action “must be taken” to address the situation.
The problem is centered on a Westfleisch slaughterhouse in Coesfeld, where more than 250 workers have contracted the virus.
The timing leaves something to be desired, that’s for sure. Germany is taking tentative steps to ease lockdown protocols and is generally seen as having among the best track records among advanced economies when it comes to containing the virus.
The outbreak in Coesfeld is apparently concentrated among migrant workers from Eastern Europe. That, in turn, shines a spotlight on the plight of those workers, including subpar living conditions and crowded transportation arrangements.
“If one person is infected then basically everybody else that sits on the bus or lives in the shared houses is infected”, Green Party representative Anne-Monika Spallek told the Associated Press, which notes that Spallek “has campaigned against the meat industry’s practice of outsourcing much of its back-breaking work to migrants working under precarious conditions”.
In many ways, the story is similar to that told by some workers in the US. One Westfleisch worker who spoke to the press for the piece linked above described a jail-like lockdown situation outside of Coesfeld. The man (who wouldn’t give his last name for fear of reprisal) said the subcontractor still wants rent payments for shared living arrangements despite ambiguity around whether wages will be paid to those who can’t work due to infection.
He and those with whom he shares housing arrangements are banned from local grocery stores and are quite literally living in a cage. “Standing behind a metal fence erected to stop workers from leaving their shared house about 15 minutes’ drive from Coesfeld, [the worker] and others inside were waiting Tuesday for the results of the COVID-19 tests they had taken four days earlier”, AP writes, describing the pitiable situation.
And it’s not just the Westfleisch facility. “A coronavirus outbreak was uncovered at a third meatpacking plant in Germany after at least 22 employees in the western German city of Bochum were found to be infected with the deadly virus”, Deutsche Welle writes, adding that “at least 109 cases of coronavirus were previously detected at a plant in the state of Schleswig-Holstein”.
In a separate piece, DW describes the conditions for migrant workers laboring for subcontractors in Germany as “modern slavery”. The man who spoke to AP said he currently feels like “a lion in a cage”.
This is a multi-faceted story with implications that go far beyond the coronavirus. The industry is beset with concerns about squalid working conditions for vulnerable demographic groups, something which needs to be addressed irrespective of any epidemic.
But the narrow read-through is that communities in and around meatpacking facilities are vulnerable to outbreaks, and that’s true in the US as well. Consider the following passages from a piece dated May 5 from the non-profit Texas Tribune:
Despite an explosion of new coronavirus cases in the Texas Panhandle tied to local meatpacking plants, Gov. Greg Abbott indicated Tuesday that he will not reimpose stricter stay-at-home rules for Amarillo and surrounding communities, relying instead on “surge response teams” to deal with growing outbreaks.
After announcing plans to reopen more businesses in the state, Abbott said teams made up of health officials, emergency response workers and the National Guard would deal with “flare-ups,” including those connected to meatpacking plants, by helping facilitate testing, ensuring sanitation at such facilities and assessing the transportation used by plants to shuttle their workers.
“There is a challenge in the Panhandle because of either a or several meatpacking plants up there,” Abbott said during a press conference at the Capitol. “There is a need for a surge response team to go in there to provide all the resources that are needed to get that area under containment.”
Again, this underscores the inherently perilous nature of reopening plans globally, as conditions across different businesses and sectors are more conducive to the spread of the virus than others. That vulnerability becomes a liability for the surrounding population, and thereby for everyone.
Meanwhile, new USDA estimates show annual pork and beef output in the US will fall for the first time in at least five years.
Despite Donald Trump’s best efforts to ensure that meatpacking plants remain open during the epidemic to avert shortages and bare supermarket shelves, prices continue to rise.
In fact, the latest data from the USDA shows wholesale beef has now more than doubled since February.
Read more on the meat crisis:
America’s Meat Crisis Isn’t ‘Solved.’ It’s Just Getting Started.
Sending “surge response teams” is so typical of the so-called US health care system. It’s always after-the-fact. For some reason, profits probably, we can’t get it through our heads that prevention is so much more cost-effective than treatment. Drug companies can’t make money unless there’s a pill for the disease. Here’s where I would think insurance companies would see the benefit to themselves covering the less expensive costs of prevention.
It’s somewhat surprising that Germany is the same, at least in this instance. I give them more credit than that
It is a sad state of affairs. The most recent examples are that data science work have connected Vitamin D with fewer deaths and another study connecting Measles vaccine with better outcomes. While correlation is not causation, where there is smoke there is often fire. These promising nascient bits of research were not even mentioned in the Congressional hearings in favor of talking up big Pharma solutions. I have both measles vaccine and an ongoing history of Vitamin D supplement. So at least on this front I am ‘ahead of the curve’ if indeed these agents are providing some benefit. I also changed my blood pressure medicine away from an ACE inhibitor when I thought I had the virus and within 3 days started to feel better.
I’m tracking some of the same ideas.
I asked my physician about MMR data and Covid. There is some evidence (not a study) that oral polio and/or MMR vaccines may mitigate effects of Covid. I don’t think OPV is available to the public. My doc said there is no downside, so If I want MMR and pay for it, ok. I have appointment to get it next week.
Latest I read on ACE says no impact. How long ago was your experience when you dropped it?
I had not read about Vitamin D.
Thanks
The theory is that Vitamin D prevents your immune system from overreacting to a virus infection.
It keeps occurring to me, a biologist, that the animals may be carrying a virus???
This has been proven with some viruses and thought to be more prevalent than proven with other viruses. Who profits from the research?
Perhaps global warming is putting stress on global ‘economy’ and that stress is creating sickness and disease in less-advantaged, margined populations? Once the disease spreads, it doesn’t respect artificial differences
No assumption on source or driver of global warming is made
Having beef and pork be more expensive and less available will no doubt be good for people’s health, independent of coronavirus.
If Fox News isn’t reporting it, then the President won’t know the problem exists. I am sure that he will tell you that he fixed that problem weeks ago and now you can have all the red meat that you want.