I have to admit, I'm a bit skeptical about Tyson Foods' CEO John H. Tyson's claims that the "food supply chain is breaking" in America. That is not to say that I don't believe him when he states that meat production at his plants is down 25 percent, or that I'm unaware of the fallout of plant closures, however temporary, from Coronavirus. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of workers are laid off, and farmers are finding it difficult to sell their animals with one of America's largest corporate processors of bacon and chicken nuggets off the market for the time being. That is horrible, and steps should be taken to protect those workers from ruin (what those steps are is a subject for another time). It's just that, I have a hard time believing that Tyson Foods is acting out of a genuine concern for anything other than their own bottom line. The language seems hyperbolic to me, and that's a claim from someone who has spent the last 50 days or so wandering around his own home, openly mocking at no one in particular, those who insist that this virus is a hoax. Hyperbole seems to be everywhere and nowhere these days.
As mentioned in the article above, workers at Tyson plants have complained about shoddy working conditions inside Tyson's plants, and that insufficient precaution was taken by the company to protect their workers from Covid-19. It is not hard to imagine how a meat-processing plant could become a harbor of germs, or that a giant corporation would take shortcuts with regards to worker safety to squeeze out a few million more pounds of processed pig corpses.
It certainly would be a PR disaster for Tyson if word got out that their own indifference/unpreparedness led to a Covid-19 breakout in a food processing plant that prepares enough food every day to feed 4 million people. It should be said that, of course, Tyson has incentives to keep their product as safe as possible, as dead customers cannot become repeat customers. Lawsuits are also highly inconvenient to any business model. Tyson also has incentive to cut corners wherever they think they can get away with it, including installing safety measures or protocols that extend to the workers themselves. A sick customer is a disaster, but a sick worker is a minor inconvenience. Workers can be replaced in the capitalistic system we've established in this country. Furthermore, those incentives for customer safety still might not be enough to resist the allure of a few extra dollars, as can be demonstrated by companies like BP Petroleum. After all, they had incentive NOT to poison the Gulf of Mexico.
Furthermore, why did Tyson Foods decide, after a CNN report about worker safety at the plant, to take out a paid, full-page ad in the New York Times (among others) decrying the breakdown of the food supply? It's almost like they were trying to send a message. We know which party, unfortunately, controls 2 of the 3 branches of government. We know that politicians tend to respond to donors, and we know that there is currently much debate about what should be in the next relief package and how it should be spent. We also know, thanks to opensecrets.org, which party Tyson Foods donated approximately $150,000 last election cycle. We also know that the party in charge tends to favor handouts to large corporations so the money will "trickle down".
What I am about to say next, I truly agonized over.
Will we really be worse off if there is 25% less meat on the market? I wish I could say that that equates to 25% fewer animals butchered for our enjoyment, but that sadly might not be the case. I wish I could say that it might lead to some wholesale cultural/lifestyle changes in our country, but I'm convinced that those are the kind of things that only people with the luxury of food security worry about. A meat shortage, as does a shortage of anything, affects those at the bottom of the economic ladder far worse. It might be easy for me to say, "fine, let's eat less meat, then. Sacrifices are necessary in this time!"
It might not be so easy for the poor and food-insecure to go without that box of chicken nuggets or that family pack of bacon that lasts two weeks.
Which leads me, sort of, to why I am skeptical about the full-page ad. This was not a news report, it was a press release, prepared in a boardroom and cultivated to convey a certain message. Perhaps this message was meant to cause a meat-buying frenzy, not unlike the one Charmin has benefited from (although, to be fair to Charmin, through no fault of their own)? Then again, given the circumstances of the world we're in today, it could totally be true, right? Maybe the fact that no one knows who the hell we can trust, or what the hell is real anymore is the issue here, and this whole thing is some kind of analogy for the utter lack of veracity and leadership we possess in this country?
Please, do not take this as anything but a musing, since we're all doing that, these days, also. Do not start believing things without evidence.
Peace out, lovely readers. Thank you.
