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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Smithfield Hams - The high cost of cheap, foreign labor |
| 2020-04-17 |
| [BBC] On the afternoon of 25 March, Julia sat down at her laptop and logged into a phony Facebook account. She'd opened it in middle school, to surreptitiously monitor boys she had crushes on. But now, many years later, it was about to serve a much more serious purpose. Wanna bet this tool is a Vegan? "Can you please look into Smithfield," she typed in a message to an account called Argus911, the Facebook-based tip line for the local newspaper, the Argus Leader. "They do have a positive [Covid-19] case and are planning to stay open." By "Smithfield", she was referring to the Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant located in her town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The factory - a massive, eight-story white box perched on the banks of the Big Sioux River - is the ninth-largest hog-processing facility in the US. When running at full capacity, it processes 19,500 freshly-slaughtered hogs per day, slicing, grinding and smoking them into millions of pounds of bacon, hot dogs and spiral-cut hams. With 3,700 workers, it is also the fourth-largest employer in the city. "Thank you for the tip," the Argus911 account responded. "What job did the worker who tested positive have?" "We are not exactly sure," Julia wrote back. "OK, thanks," Argus911 replied. "We'll be in touch." The next day, at 7:35am, the Argus Leader published the story on its website: "Smithfield Foods employee tests positive for coronavirus". The reporter confirmed through a company spokeswoman that, indeed, an employee had tested positive, was in a 14-day quarantine, and that his or her work area and other common spaces had been "thoroughly sanitised". But the plant, deemed part of a "critical infrastructure industry" by the Trump administration, would remain fully operational. "Food is an essential part of all our lives, and our more than 40,000 US team members, thousands of American family farmers and our many other supply chain partners are a crucial part of our nation's response to Covid-19," Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in an online video statement released 19 March to explain the decision to keep factories open. "We are taking the utmost precautions to ensure the health and well-being of our employees and consumers." But Julia was alarmed. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #15 *Shrug* Considering the long going trade imbalance that Chinese Big Businesses, really proxies of the CCP, would have massive cash reserves that would be inconvenient to move back to China -- so buy "stuff" in the USA. It's Chinese entrepreneurs trying to shield their assets from seizure by the Chinese regime - a threat that has hung over all wealthy figures in all regimes pretty much since the beginning of time. Edward Longshanks did it to Jewish merchants to whom he owed money, and Philip did it to the Knights Templar. Capital flight to avoid regime thievery is why Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, has moved almost all of his assets outside of not just China, but Hong Kong itself. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2020-04-17 18:52 |
| #14 Have read the bod CV outbreak that forced closure of SD packing plant occurred two weeks after a visit by officials from China. Not sure it's true but certainly makes sense. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2020-04-17 15:57 |
| #13 What a nauseating narration, complete with goofy graphics. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2020-04-17 15:54 |
| #12 Javelina around here,better watch their back come dusk. |
| Posted by: bbrewer126 2020-04-17 14:00 |
| #11 #10 Can you nationalize them (there is a precedent)? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-04-17 13:43 |
| #10 *Shrug* Considering the long going trade imbalance that Chinese Big Businesses, really proxies of the CCP, would have massive cash reserves that would be inconvenient to move back to China -- so buy "stuff" in the USA. |
| Posted by: magpie 2020-04-17 13:39 |
| #9 ...well there is a substitute to meet your requirements. Though I'm sure there'll be posters who says its not a real substitute (see - "They've never tried real socialism") ;) |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-04-17 13:19 |
| #8 ^Love of bacon drives people crazy? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-04-17 10:13 |
| #7 It's the ninth-largest... which means there are eight larger pork processors in the country. Yet people are obsessing over this one plant temporarily closing and declaring we're about to have a famine. Too many spoiled and unserious people around. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2020-04-17 10:12 |
| #6 Tl;dr. Summary: Government bad, business worse, and OrangeManBad. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2020-04-17 09:33 |
| #5 But 'who knew?' I suspect nearly everyone within a 150 mile radius. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-04-17 09:02 |
| #4 Other meat packing companies laugh and say "let's not be like that." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-04-17 07:38 |
| #3 Julia should only take her lap top and do a very rude thing, and while she's about it let's not forget her 'alarm' either. There is a great deal more to the Smithfield story and the situation in SD. This amounts to little more than propaganda apparently to create distrust in the food supply chains. The grocery stores still groan with abundant choices of fresh food. |
| Posted by: Cesare 2020-04-17 07:34 |
| #2 /\ |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-04-17 07:23 |
| #1 Start with the lawn chairs and toilet seats, then move to round eyes' diet. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-04-17 03:20 |