Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/big-meat/)
Big Ag must have breathed a huge collective sigh of relief when President-elect Joe Biden tapped Tom Vilsack to be secretary of USDA. For Big Ag Vilsack is like your grandfather's favorite slippers – comfortable, cuddley warm, and dependable.
Last month our worst fears were confirmed after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a pair of COVID-19 safety violation related fines against Big-Meat giants China WH-group owned Smithfield Foods and Brazilian-owned JBS. Mismanagement at Smithfield’s meat packing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota resulted in almost 13-hundred COVID-19 positive tests. Four plant workers died. JBS is equally culpable. At the JBS USA plant in Greeley, Colorado 290 workers tested positive for COVID-19. Six have died.
Big Meat and Big Dairy have planted their flag on what they believe these food-wanna-bees can call their products. In their worldview words like meat, milk, and butter are verboten. And they’ve heavily lobbied states to enact laws restricting veggie-based-proteins and other meat alternatives from calling their wares burgers, hot dogs, sausage, butter, and the like. Among states signing on to this nonsense include Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
California voters said not only must in-state farmers raise calves, pigs, and chickens in a humane way, but that out-of-state Big Meat and Egg producers must also meet Prop 12 standards in order to sell shelled and liquid eggs, uncooked pork from breeding pigs and veal from calves to California wholesales and retailers.
North Carolina thought they had it wired – a Teflon ag-gag law –Chief Justice Thomas Schroeder wasn’t buying what ALEC, North Carolina attorney general, and North Carolina Farm Bureau were selling.
If that’s not enough the Department of Justice has subpoenaed Big-Meats “big four” – Tyson Foods, JBS SA, Cargill, and National Beef/Marfrig – in an attempt to learn if there’s been price fixing hanky-panky during the COVID-19 crisis. The subpoenas come at the request of Attorneys general from North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Missouri, Idaho, and Arizona and South Dakota who collectively can’t figure out what the heck is going on with cattle prices in the last several months.
The recent meat industry indictment is damning. If the DOJ is invested in ending corruption, more indictments will follow.