Thread by @LizSpecht

There has been so much happening this week at the nexus of COVID-19, the meat industry, & animal ag as a whole that it's hard to distill which insights & quotes to share.

What's resoundingly clear is that this disruption is rattling our current protein paradigm to its core. 1/n

I'll spotlight this @voxdotcom article, which is long but well worth it for responses it provides to the common retorts. Any simplified, sound-biteable angle to this story is sure to miss a lot. As usual, I'll pull some favorite quotes in this thread. 2/n
vox.com/recode/2020/5/…

"The plight of these workers is just the starting point in a chain of crises the coronavirus is creating in America’s food supply. The shuttered meatpacking plants have created a bottleneck in the system through which most meat in the United States must flow..." 3/n

"Things get really tricky on the other side of that bottleneck, where thousands of farmers have planned the lives of their animals around a schedule that terminates at those meatpacking facilities... [which] could send ripple effects through a farm’s productivity for years." 4/n

"While legislation... in the early 20th century improved certain aspects of how processing works, Americans were already hooked on cheap, readily available meat & seemed unwilling to part w/ the luxury, regardless of how despicable the industry was. So the industry didn’t change.

"[T]he big meat corporations continued to exploit the cheap labor. A hundred years later, workers in meatpacking plants are getting sick and dying right now, but most Americans are instead focusing their attention on Wendy’s being out of burgers." 6/n

"It’s entirely possible that meatpacking plants will continue to shut down due to Covid-19 outbreaks, & this will lead to yrs of disruptions to the US food supply. Based on the level of panic in the boardrooms of companies... this doesn’t just seem possible. It seems likely." 7/n

"Meanwhile, the conditions for the animals in all of these situations are potentially worse than before as uncertainty leaves them waiting longer in boxcars and holding pens rather than living in open spaces." 8/n

“'The top four beef processors process over 80 percent of the heifer slaughter... Over 60 percent of poultry and pork are processed by the largest firms.' ... The smaller processors don’t have the capacity to deal with all these cows, chickens, and pigs." 9/n

"So it’s not really about the burgers. There’s a version of America and its food consumption habits that existed three months ago that might never exist again. Some might feel entitled to getting that back. Others will find something new to want." /end