Well, what a surprise- NOT!

I’ve been writing about conditions in meat/chicken processing facilities for a while.  Both beef and poultry processors have been finagling less oversight from the Department of Agriculture for a while.  (Here’s a 2013 post about how conditions have been “improved”.  That’s for the plant owners, not the workers or the product purchasers.)

Of course, with the pandemic, we saw how many (and how quickly) employees were contracting COVID-19.  Except, that’s about to get much worse.  (Oh.  NOW you understand why the Turtle [Mitch McDonnell] was so desperate to absolve corporations from killings their employees during the pandemic!)

The about-to-be-extinguished administration (this regulation has been promoted right after TheDonald lost the Presidential election) has just permitted 15 poultry processing facilities to increase the speeds on their processing lines. Back in 2012, poultry lines asked to dump chlorine on the carcasses and up the speed to 175 (from 140; turkey processing went up to 55 from 40) a minute.  Think about that number- that’s almost 3 chickens a second.  No wonder employees were developing carpal tunnel syndrome- and being superspreaders (since there is no chance to have open space between employees on that speedway alley line.)  With 100,000 comments on the rule change, by late 2013, it was tabled. Only to be brought back to life now by TheDonald and his ilk.

Note:  this is a turkey plant.  That line only moves 1/3 as fast as chickens!

Part of the reason for this uptick is that during the pandemic, we Americans have been buying 20% more chicken since the pandemic had been declared in March [2020].  And, of course, this rule has nothing to do with the fact that 60% of the workers in these plants are minorities- with more than half of those folks lacking English proficiency.

Not only will these test speeds be made permanent, the government ruling will expand these conditions to 12 more facilities.  Once operating a those higher speeds, the plants are TEN TIMES as likely to have coronavirus among their workers as those running at the lower speeds. (Food and Environment Reporting Network, FERN.)  With those speeds, it is literally impossible for employees to maintain social distancing. (As of now, some 51000 workers in the processing plants have contracted COVID, with 347 dead.  Statistics as bad as nursing homes [with their 100,000 dead], but pretty high up there.)  Another fact to consider- 41% of the plants operating with high speed waivers have staff infected with coronavirus, while only 4% of the slower [yet still speedy] processing plants have occurrences.

Of course, the USDA claims there is no “direct link” between line speeds and coronavirus.  Just like there’s no direct link between contracting COVID-19 and not wearing a mask. (Moreover, in a quirk of regulatory affairs, the USDA need not concern itself with worker safety- that’s the job for OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.   Oh- and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control]- which lacks regulatory authority, of course- says that use of plastic sheeting (which hits each and every worker as they attempt to grab the chicken to eviscerate it) is NOT a replacement for the 6 foot distancing window required.  But, of course, the plants use plastic sheeting and no social distancing.)

Note that the National Chicken Council (an industry lobbying group) claims they’ve added workers and processing lines to handle the speed-up.  Which is totally disputed by the workers’ unions.  I’m with the unions on this one, folks.

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