The Trump Administration has decided to sacrifice the American people and make the Nation’s food supply less safe
By Natasha Dowdy Gordon
April 28, 2020 will go down as the one of the most defining dates in the history of the United States. Americans are literally fighting for their lives, as Covid-19 continues to ravage the nation. On a day when the people of the United States saw the death toll from the coronavirus not just reach, but exceed the 50,000 mark and the number of cases of the virus surge past the one million mark. Donald Trump made the decision to issue an executive order enacting the Defense Production Act (DPA) and demanding that the nations meat processing plants call their employees back into work to restart their production of meat products.
This latest move by the Trump Administration has drawn the ire of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who have been fighting the coronavirus for weeks without personal protective equipment (PPE). If the DPA was enacted by the president weeks ago, hospitals around the country would have been able to better protect their workforce, as the law would have compelled manufactures of supplies like N-95 masks, face shields and disposable gowns to be produced in mass quantities.
Despite the fact that the United States is already facing a shortage of medical professionals like physicians and nurses, the president teased that the enactment of the DPA was a consideration. As the weeks rolled on and medical providers, first responders and essential workers started to die, the president continued to tout that he had the power to protect frontline heroes, yet he failed to do so.
The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts that the United States will see a shortage of 122,000 physicians by 2032 (1), and the United States currently needs approximately one million nurses to make up the nursing shortfall. (2) There continues to be a constant barrage of outcries from medical experts and politicians on both sides of the political aisle, as Donald Trump still refuses to use the power of his Sharpie to save the lives of those who the American people need the most.
Many of the nation’s meat processing plants have been forced to shut down due to the rampant spread of Covid-19 throughout their facilities and the geographical areas they are located in. This has prompted questions from health professionals across the nation, and the mayors of municipalities that have become COVID-19 hotspots.
The primary responsibility of the president of the United States is to ensure the safety of the country’s people. Many experts have publicly verbalized that on this front Donald Trump has failed the people of the United States miserably. Others question why has the Trump Administration’s attention to COVID-19 been so erratic, disorganized and the strategy to address the issues caused by the pandemic appears to be more centered around money rather than the lives of the American people.
The Trump Administration’s determination to reopen the country and to get back to the business of processing meat is baffling to many in the medical community, especially when the cases of coronavirus continue to soar across the nation and the death toll continues to climb.
In a Trump Administration internal document obtained by the New York Times, they project that the death cases from COVID-19 will dramatically increase from their current level of 1750 deaths per day to 3000 deaths per day by June 1, 2020. Likewise, the confirmed cases of the virus are expected to rise from the current level of 3000 per day to an astounding 200,000 confirmed cases per day.
As experts and the American citizenry rack their brains around the actions of the president in regard to pressuring states to open up for business. Many people are questioning why there has been little to no effort on behalf of the Trump administration to mitigate or at least try to contain the spread of the virus in light of its alarming devastation since he ordered the nation’s meat processing companies to get back to work while endangering the lives of their employees in the process. Americans would like to believe that their president’s top priority is protecting them from harm, however during the course of this pandemic, the Trump administration has continued to engage in actions that not only make Americans less safe, but increase the likelihood that members of an unsuspecting public will get sick and possibly lose their lives.
There’s a lot of concerns being raised about the nation’s food supply chain since the closure of 115 meat processing plants across the country. A number of projections made by economists have indicated there may be a shortage of meat in America. According to the nation’s labor unions which represent workers in the country’s plants, as well as food safety advocacy groups like The Center for Food Safety and Food and Water Watch, the nation’s meat supply has been an issue in terms of the health and welfare of the American people. The dangers associated with the meat processed in plants throughout the United States have dramatically increased due to the pandemic and also due to the actions of the president. Recently, The Trump Administration signed 11 waivers granting meat processing plants to speed up their processing lines, reduce the number of USDA meat inspectors in their plants and allow untrained workers to process the meat. With the stroke of a pen, the line speeds(how fast the meat goes by) in plants have been increased to extraordinary rates.
A number of plants across the U.S. have been experimenting with the New Swine Inspection System (NSIS). The system gives USDA inspectors just 2.6 seconds to determine if the employees designated by their employers have performed the tasks relating to the safety of the meat they process correctly. What this equates to is an increase on line speeds in pork plants from 1106 heads of pork per hour to 1500 heads of pork per hour. To break this down even further, the pork processing plants that are currently engaged in the NSIS have only one minute to determine if 25 heads of pork is safe for human consumption. In addition to the increases in line speeds, the number of USDA meat inspectors has been reduced to only three per line under NSIS guidelines
According to Tony Corbo from Food and Water Watch, there is a push by some of the biggest companies that produce pork to implement NSIS especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic. 40 facilities which account for the processing of over 92% of all of the pork processed in the U.S. include brands names like Clemmons, Tyson, JBS, Smithfield and Quality Pork. You would hope that they would fully be aware how common it is for contaminants like bile, feces, toe nails and hair to be found on hog carcasses to be given the green light to be processed into sausage, pork chops, hot dogs, bacon and other pork products.
Meat inspectors have been sounding the alarm over NSIS and have tried to warn the general public about the fact that they could be serving their families pork that is not safe for human consumption. One USDA meat inspector, Jill Mauer, was interviewed by NBC news said the following, “The consumer’s being duped. They believe that it is actually getting federally inspected, when there is no one there to even watch or do anything about anything.” Another USDA meat inspector, Anthony Vallone said, “It’s so hard to go to work without feeling physically sick watching this just happen unfolding in front of you. Especially when you took an oath to protect the American people.” Both Vallone and Mauer filed whistleblower disclosure forms with the Office of Special Council about their concerns.
Based on the results of reports made following the evaluation of 6000 random samples of meat taken from plants participating in the NSIS three lawsuits challenging the system have been filed by Food and Water Watch, the Center for Food Safety, labor unions. Food and Water Watch was bulldozed into filing a separate lawsuit in order to obtain what the group described as crucial and undisclosed information that could lead to even more pork laced with contaminates entering the consumer and exportation pipeline, with the potential of developing into an animal disease that could be transmitted to humans and or ravage herds of hogs.
The Unites States Secretary of Agriculture Sunny Perdue has been taken a lot of heat from public health officials over his role in the continual implementation of the NSIS during the COVID-19 pandemic and his inaction in regard to ensuring the safety of the USDA meat inspectors, the meat processer and meat packers employed by the plants are protected. There was no personal protection equipment provided to employees after several had contracted COVID-19. And no other provisions were put into place to protect the other workers. The mayor of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Paul TenHaken, put his dissatisfaction with Mr. Perdue on full display during a press conference he gave after the cases of COVID-19 cases connected to a Smithfield plant in his municipality went from 80 cases on a Friday to well over 500 the following Monday.
The mayor described in great detail, the exchange he had with Smithfield executives, and how they got off of the phone call with him to answer the call from Sunny Perdue, who had called to urge Smithfield’s decision makers to allow the plant to remain open despite the 80 confirmed cases of the virus. Mayor TenHaken described his communication regarding the spread of the coronavirus in the plant and his city with Smithfield executives as heated. The plant is scheduled to reopen this month in spite of the mayor’s efforts to ensure the safety of the people who work there.
As families are grappling with the deaths of family members and workers are having to make the gut wrenching decision to go into plants to process meat they know is contaminated, while knowing that they are risking their lives, it brings into question why the Governors of states would force human beings to make such a damming choice, as several have stated that if workers did not return to their jobs, they would not receive unemployment. There are also questions being asked by advocacy groups and labor organizations about who the workers in America’s hog processing plants are being asked to die for.
The Smithfield plant in South Dakota supplies the United States with four percent of its pork, while 60 percent of the meat processed in the plant is exported to China. It should be noted that Smithfield, a mainstay of America’s commerce, was sold to a Chinese billionaire who owns the W.H. Group in 2013 for $7.1 billion. At the time, the deal was the largest acquisition of an American company by a Chinese entity. The W.H. Group also owns Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs. Smithfield has 50 facilities in the United States, with a workforce of 40,000 employees and does over $24 billion in sales annually.
Smithfield, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs
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