coronavirus

It seems evident that the corona virus likes to spread in slaughterhouses, as these have been the primary vectors for the pandemic here in the Midwest. The racist says that the susceptibility of brown skinned people to the virus is proof they are in some basic way different from us. There is another explanation though, one based in fact rather than prejudice. To see it we have to ask why it is that brown skinned people are slaughtering the hogs.

To know where we are, we must understand where we were. And in 1973 I was working at the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Hospital where I was responsible for supervising veterinary students in their part time work at the University. I struck up a friendship with one of these and soon understood that this was his first experience working during the school term. He was a senior at the time, soon to graduate.

The usual route to a veterinary license at the University of Minnesota is by taking a four year course of study in animal science. Some are able to gain entry to the veterinary program after two years in animal science, more are allowed in after three years, and some spend the entire four years of the animal science program before they are admitted. Some never are. It is a pretty tough program. I cannot recall whether my friend got in after two, three or all four years. He was a pretty bright fellow, that I remember.

He told me one day that his entire time at University, through whatever number of years in animal science and then the four pretty intense years at Vet Med itself was sponsored by checks written by his father. As a condition he was allowed to work only during summers, not during the school term. Then he was expected to study. His father relented and relaxed the rule for his last few months at the program. His father was a slaughterhouse worker who often worked the evening shift because it paid ten cents an hour more. My friend loved and deeply admired his father. From today’s viewpoint this seems a fantasy. I cannot feature a slaughterhouse worker sponsoring his child at University today.

As always, there are steps between then and now. Powerful people in industry were told in the early eighties that labor laws and rules would no longer be enforced. Soon after, local P 9 of the meat cutters union struck and were locked out by Hormel for about two years, in my memory. My friend’s father’s union. The workers eventually came back, some of them at least, for wages not much more than half of what they had formerly. Smaller slaughter facilities through out the Midwest followed suit. Increasingly immigrants and foreign nationals did the work.

Other changes followed, made possible by the lack of a strong union voice. Line speeds were steadily increased. Both bathroom breaks and speaking to others on the crew were disallowed in some facilities. Workers were crowded. Repetitive motion injuries skyrocketed.

Then, with the libertarian philosophy increasingly dominant in government, the job of meats inspection began to be passed from the government to the large meat companies. Today, if you want to be sure you are getting inspected meat, you really should buy as directly from the farmer as possible. Small plants must still be inspected, either by the USDA or the state’s “Equal To” system.

There are some questions we should ask before we jump to any conclusions about immigrants and foreign nationals. Where did the money go that was “saved” by underpaying workers? Is any of it still in mid America helping our families and communities or is it all on Wall Street? How bad are conditions in the home country that migration to employment in an American meat plant as they currently run looks like a good idea? And importantly now in this time of pandemic, can sickness be blamed on racial difference or is it rather a consequence of bad, stressful, and crowded working conditions and immune systems weakened by stress and high blood pressure related to coping with public hatred, bad housing and bad food? A quick tour of any grocery store will show that, in our country, cheap food is almost always bad food. Weak immune systems open the door for the virus.

The richer we get (some of us) the poorer we are (all of us)!