A few excerpts from a recent article I read in The Washington Post by Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s a fairly disturbing article that outlines how the meat industry is so cruel to PEOPLE and ANIMALS. Reading the full article puts these tidbits in context, but a few especially poignant paragraphs are below.

Quoted from the article …

“Trump’s “order” was, in fact, the result of meat industry executives requesting his relief from legal liability for worker deaths. The number of slaughterhouse workers who have already died this year is on par with the number of U.S. servicemembers who have died annually fighting in Afghanistan over the last five years. Military personnel risking their lives to fight terrorism is one thing. How did the president arrive at the absurdity of requiring civilians to risk their lives for the sake of a particular food?”

“An in-depth report by Oxfam documents that, for years, workers in U.S. poultry slaughter plants — including those operated by Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, Perdue and Pilgrim’s Pride — commonly wear adult diapers or simply urinate on themselves because bathroom breaks are routinely denied by supervisors under threats of retribution.”

“We often hear that people of color are putting themselves at greater personal risk during this pandemic, but the truth is they are being put at greater risk. White people generate 97 percent of all income from the operation of farms. Yet Latinx farmers alone comprise more than 80 percent of farm laborers. The fact that the overwhelming majority of people who will suffer from Trump’s slaughter order are black and brown, and that the overwhelming majority of the executives who pleaded with him to do it are white, cannot be ignored.”

“Companies such as Tyson Foods did it by inventing a business model that requires environmental destruction, worker exploitation, animal cruelty and conditions that create “novel” viruses. (Of the 16 strains of novel influenza viruses that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified as being of highest concern, all but two converted to human viruses in commercial poultry farms.)”

I’d truly love to hear how anyone can justify this? Honestly, I would. Maybe I am missing something here?