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TNR’s Kate Aronoff was not afraid to tell truth about Trump’s misguided executive order keeping meatpacking plants open. She called it “murder.”
Trump ignored a warning from Tyson Foods that the country’s food supply chain was breaking. “A Tyson facility in Waterloo, Iowa, had to be shut down … after being linked to 200 cases of Covid-19. Forty-four percent of the plant’s workforce had tested positive for coronavirus; 90 percent of cases in surrounding Black Hawk County can be traced back to the plant,” wrote Aronoff.
These times are frightening enough without the president using his vast powers to promote deadly working conditions. Mainstream media coverage of Trump’s order has been shameful—even supportive on the right. If you’re looking for honest, fearless journalism, we have a special offer:
“Trump’s executive order could give the plants further license to ignore guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is voluntary anyway,” Kate highlighted. “Not just in slaughterhouses, but across the country, the extent to which workers manage to take a stand on outrageous labor conditions may mean the difference between an orderly reopening of the economy and a murderous one,” she added.
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“Tyson and Smithfield executives have shareholders hungry for dividends, and the current governmental position seems to be that if a few thousand workers and their family members have to die for those dividends, so be it. As it infects workers with the coronavirus, industrial animal agriculture may well be brewing the next deadly, world-stopping pandemic,” Aronoff warned.
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