ABSTRACT
In the United States, the SARS-CoV-2 “pandemic spring” began with a rash of super-spreader events in giant meatpacking plants. Attention to this, combined with news of putative origins of Covid-19 in the wild meat trade, makes the newfound popularity of plant-based meat seem fitting if small consolation. This chapter gazes through the lens of Industrial Meat to elucidate viral trajectories, drawing on epidemiology, investigative reporting, agro-ecology and political economy to illustrate how “Big Meat” politicised public health, exacerbating inequities in illness and death and the climate/economic crisis itself. The story is grounded in two investigations to track rural Covid-19 spread from meat-processing in the U.S. Southeast. Over 41,000 COVID cases and 200 deaths among mostly “essential” (but apparently expendable) Latino and Black workers occurred during outbreaks in 500 U.S. meat-processing plants. A lobbying blitz by Tyson Foods, Smithfield, JBS and Cargill fostered President Donald Trump’s and public health officials’ collusion with the industry. Designated “critical infrastructure,” plants remained open, perpetuating community spread. In contrast, outbreaks at European meatpackers were far less serious and rapidly controlled. The case sheds light on Big Meat’s global externalities. Companies exported record amounts of meat even as they hyped a domestic “meat shortage.” I follow JBS back to Brazil, where the company’s newly touted investments in plant-based meat bolster its ongoing public campaign to minimise its role in Amazonian fires and deforestation—the very activities that create ungoverned industrial zones and newly emergent diseases.
