How slaughterhouses became breeding grounds for coronavirus

It has been a hectic time for Brazilian prosecutors negotiating with the country’s meat suppliers to implement measures to protect slaughterhouse workers from coronavirus.

“Abattoirs are hotspots of Covid-19,” said Priscila Dibi Schvarcz, a labour prosecutor who highlighted the unsafe conditions faced by employees, including “many people working shoulder to shoulder without the [social] distancing” that can slow the spread of the virus.

For years, critics have accused the industrial meat industry — supplying a global meat market estimated to be worth about $1.4tn, according to Barclays — of practices that cause a range of health, animal welfare and environmental issues. Now the outsized infection rate among slaughterhouse workers during the coronavirus crisis has again shone a light on the working practices in these facilities. 

From the Americas to Europe and Australia, abattoirs have become important vectors for infection, with plants around the world forced to close because of infection breakouts. In the US more than 20,000 meat-packing plant workers have fallen ill, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network, while Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, France and the UK have faced similar issues in their slaughterhouses.

The problem has been exacerbated because meat-processing employees were designated essential in many countries. This meant they generally carried on working in close-confines, helping to spread the disease to the wider community. 

People are horrified . . . A lot more people are going to get sick before this is over just to get meat on the table

Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said many consumers were aghast to learn how meat-packing plants operated. “People are horrified about the working conditions in the sector,” she said.

“A lot more people are going to get sick before this is over just to get meat on the table. [Meat processors] are more interested in getting the meat out but [workers] are helpless,” she added.

The background to the crisis has been consolidation and aggressive cost-cutting caused by fierce competition among meat groups for domestic and export market share, said Enrico Somaglia, deputy general secretary of the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions. “It is a race to the bottom,” he said.

Ms Dibi Schvarcz, the prosecutor, said the highest concentrations of cases in her state of Rio Grande do Sul were where slaughterhouses are located. The prosecutors sued JBS, the world’s largest meat-packer, after it failed to agree a deal to improve conditions for its employees, she said.

Her observations are in line with analysis from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has pointed out that cramped working conditions on processing lines and long working hours were part of the reason why the disease had spread so rapidly in the plants.

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Unions have blamed a low-cost business model reliant on high production levels. This, in turn, has led to increased speed on the lines that process carcasses, requiring employees to work in close proximity. Medical leave policies and remuneration structures in the industry also incentivised employees to keep on working even when they experienced symptoms of the virus, the CDC said.

In Germany, the number-two pork exporter after the US, the meat industry has come under intense scrutiny following a series of slaughterhouse closures because of virus outbreaks.

The sector has traditionally relied on cheap migrant labour brought in by subcontractors to remain competitive. Working up to 60 hours a week, the migrants live seven to eight per the accommodation provided by subcontracting agencies — conditions that one European meat company executive privately acknowledged was “modern slavery”.

“The common factor [globally] is tough working conditions, with workers often sub-contracted or . . . on temporary contracts,” said Mr Somaglia. 

Stung by the outcry, the German government announced proposals to tighten regulation of the industry, banning subcontracting workers in meat plants and setting minimum standards for the accommodation of employees.

Farmers and the meat industry reject the demonisation of the sector. The North American Meat Institute, which represents processors, said: “The health and safety of the men and women who work in our facilities is our first priority. Our challenge is to keep our employees safe while fulfilling our special responsibility to make food.”

JBS has said employee health was a “priority” and that it regretted the way prosecutors were holding it responsible for the spread of Covid-19 in Brazil. The country’s other big meat groups Brazil Foods and Marfrig have settled with the country’s authorities.

Denmark, a large pork exporter, has been a notable outlier amid the wave of slaughterhouse outbreaks, with only a handful of workers becoming ill.

Lars Hinrichsen of the Danish Meat Research Institute, said the country’s meat plants boasted high levels of automation manned by well-paid workers. “If you have cheap labour, you don’t have the incentive to automate,” he said.

Jais Valeur, chief executive at Danish Crown, Europe’s largest meat producer, said its workers were paid about $30 an hour, compared with about $14 an hour in the US. “Part of the answer has been to reduce labour and automate,” he said.

The business practices of the meat industry have remained largely opaque partly due to the lack of curiosity among consumers, but also because it has suited many companies to keep it that way.

Danish Crown, however, stressed the transparency of its plants. “We’ve got nothing to hide,” Mr Valeur said. “It’s important that people know what it actually involves to produce what’s on your table and also be willing to pay for it.”

Amy Fitzgerald, associate professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, who has written on the social history of slaughterhouses, said that if any good came from the pandemic for the meat industry, it would be to heighten awareness about the industrial production process.

“No one has really wanted to think about how meat is produced and any attention that’s brought to the industry and their culture is helpful,” she said.

Letter in response to this article:

Covid-19 highlights need to clean up meat industry / From Dr Can Baskent, Lecturer, Middlesex University, London NW4, UK