giantmecha

LAist.

Can we stop praising Shake Shack? The company is (supposedly) returning the loan — which it never should have received — only because of the blowback.

NY Times.

Buzzfeed.

Was there any way to prevent the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in South Dakota from becoming one of the country’s largest known coronavirus clusters, with more than 700 workers infected? It’s hard to know “what could have been done differently,” a Smithfield spokesperson said, given what she referred to as the plant’s “large immigrant population.”

“Living circumstances in certain cultures are different than they are with your traditional American family,” she explained.
On April 10, Michael Bul Gayo Gatluak, a 22-year-old immigrant from South Sudan, clocked in at the hog kill department on the sixth floor. His job requires him to stand for hours on a platform “really, really close” to other workers along the production line where pig carcasses are chopped. “The job is so heavy,” he said. “You have to breathe so hard.” When he got home that night, he started feeling ill. He said he tested positive for COVID-19 three days later. “With how we work on the line, I would say I got sick because of them not taking safety measures,” Gatluak told BuzzFeed News. “When they had their first case, I don’t think they acted accordingly.”

The plant is now closed indefinitely, cutting the country off from about 5% of its national pork supply. With 725 confirmed cases among workers and 143 more traced to them, the Smithfield outbreak has eclipsed most of the country’s worst-hit nursing homes and prisons among the largest community outbreaks.

Sentient Media.

Business Insider.

NY Times.

Tenderly.

Plant Based News.

• Greenhouse Gas Emissions: New research suggests that the livestock industry is responsible for at least 37 percent of all GHG emissions. Methane — responsible for nearly one-fifth of all the global warming potential over the next 50 years — largely comes from animal agriculture. It’s also worth noting that methane warms the planet at up to 86 times the rate of CO2, making it yet another deadly byproduct of the animal agriculture industry.
   
• Resource Depletion: In 2018, the industrial agriculture industry used over 70 percent of soy crops to feed livestock animals. To make room for feed crops, farmers around the world clear forests, grasslands, and wetlands, which results in deforestation, soil erosion, foregone carbon absorption, and animal habitat loss. Additionally, agriculture uses more than two-thirds of the world’s freshwater resources. About half of that water is used to grow livestock feed crops.
   
• Water Contamination: With over 72 billion animals raised for food each year, fecal waste is inevitable — a lot of it. Most farms store animal waste in open-air lagoons. This waste and the bacteria that live in it can enter local water supplies by seeping into the ground or by flooding. High levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and ammonia from animal waste can further lead to dead zones in the oceans which threaten marine life and biodiversity.

Sentient Media.

Medium.

WSJ.

BBC.

AP News.

NY Times.

Sentient Media.