What’s the future of our food distribution system?

By KAREN PARKER

County Line Publisher Emeritus

After about the 10th trip through at least five different stores, it occurred to me that I was not going to find lids for canning jars. Not that I am big on canning. With just two of us now, I mostly freeze things, but I do still do jams, salsa, and tomato sauce occasionally. 

I did note that stores now have canning jars, but many limit the number of cases per customer (as if you wouldn’t send family members in to stock up).

I don’t know what caused the shortage. A disrupted supply chain, or perhaps the end timers’ run on canning supplies?

Whatever the case, the pandemic has shown us that our food supply is fragile to the point of unreliability. With mergers and acquisitions, nearly all of our meat supply rests in the hands of four major corporations: JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and Smithfield. With the power of corporate money, they have successfully fought health and safety regulations and sidestepped rules designed to protect the health and safety of workers,

As it turned out, the virus did not care how many congressmen and women could be bought off. It also did not care that meat plants operated under inhumane conditions for low-wage job earners. The virus was about to make their lives even more inhumane.

In April of last year, there were at least 115 facilities with cases across 23 states, and at least 4,913 workers diagnosed positive with Covid-19, or about 3 percent of the workforce, with 20 deaths reported.

By September, at least 42,534 workers at meatpacking plants had contracted the coronavirus, and at least 203 had died. Covid-19 cases had been discovered in at least 494 meatpacking plants.

Workers, fearing job loss and lost wages, stayed at work, mostly in close quarters, and then spread the virus to their fellow employees.

And then the USDA ever so helpfully relaxed protections at 15 poultry plants, allowing the line to speed up and make conditions even more crowded.

And guess what? Sick and dying employees aren’t good for production.

On May 4, 2020, Tyson Foods informed its investors that U.S. pork production had declined 50 percent. The same day, Costco announced restrictions on sales of fresh meat, limiting customers to purchasing no more than three items among poultry, beef, and pork products. Grocery store chains Kroger and Wegmans imposed similar restrictions on customer meat purchases.

One Delaware chicken processor slaughtered two million chickens, as it did not have the capacity to process them. In other instances, milk was dumped and chicks were destroyed.

The pandemic pointed out the bottleneck in production. The federal government has a number of options at its disposal to regulate monopolies, but it doesn’t take advantage of them. Handouts to elected officials take care of that nuisance.

But must we wait until neighbors are slugging it out over the last pork chop in the cooler before we stop fussing over meaningless cultural issues and attempt to solve the country’s real problems.

Instead, we have been getting absurd proposals, like this one from Matt Gaetz (R-Florida). It is only one sentence long: “The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.” The text of the bill does not stipulate what would become of existing EPA regulations and their enforcement, but Gaetz has indicated that he intends jurisdiction to fall to individual states.

It must have been after that proposal failed that the Congressman took up chasing underaged girls.

As we approach the annual dairy breakfast next week, will the industry also fall to “bigger is better”? I am so old that I recall the days of hauling milk in cans, and any farmer who expanded his or her herd to more than 30 cows was viewed with skepticism.

So far, the dairy business has not dwindled to a few major players like it has in the meat industry. But it’s coming. In 2019, there were 3,281 fewer licensed operations than there were in 2018.

Dairy Farmers of America Inc., Saputo Inc. and Nestlé were the top three producers of dairy markets in the United States. But as huge companies such as Nestle continue to gobble up their smaller rivals, you can bet someday we will be at the dairy case, scrapping over the last quart of milk.

When was the last time you knew of a young person going into dairy farming? It’s rare. Not only do we not encourage it, but also the government’s punishing dairy prices would chase anyone away.

I guess they want us all to lift a glass of almond milk.

Yum.

 

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