THE OTHER ‘WHITE MEAT’: Why big meat has also an ugly human rights problem
Aside from animals, the planet, and human health, there’s another, major problem with the way the meat industry operates: it routinely and systemically exploits and abuses human beings in its own supply chains. There have been a lot of human rights violations, different abuse allegations, discrimination allegations that have come up across the industry.
CHARLOTTE POINTING: Centralization is king in the meat industry. The days of most people eating meat from small local farms are long gone. And now, a very small number of large corporations produce the majority of meat that arrives in grocery store aisles. In the US, meat giants like Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and Marfrig, each of which is worth billions, control most of the market.
Every year, the meat industry raises and slaughters billions of animals, including cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. All of this comes with a major environmental impact; livestock emits 14.5 percent of emissions, drives deforestation, and pollutes the air and valuable water systems, putting the health of local communities at risk. But still, the meat industry grows. Right now, the US meat industry alone is worth more than $165 billion. Globally, the value is nearly $900 billion. And by 2027, Statia predicts that the global market could hit a value of more than $1 trillion.
But aside from animals, the planet, and human health, there’s another, major problem with the way the meat industry operates: it routinely and systemically exploits and abuses human beings in its own supply chains. Sinclair’s fictional account was harrowing, but the truth is even worse, reports Chloe Sorvino, a journalist for Forbes and author of the book Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat…
Like Sinclair’s Rudkis, most are immigrants. “It’s a tale as old as time,” Sorvino told VegNews. “The Jungle was a novel, but it was based on the reporting that Sinclair did in these slaughterhouses. Even back then, there were many, many immigrants working in the slaughterhouses. It’s because it’s a dirty, dangerous job, seen by some as unseemly. That’s why the industry has made a point of working with immigrants or seeking out refugees or other workers who may not have very many other places to work.”
During her research for Raw Deal, Sorvino sifted through hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits and class actions, filed by desperate workers trying to get justice for the way the industry’s biggest corporations had treated them. But JBS, she says, was among the worst. “The ‘Human Cost of Eating Meat’ chapter in my book is all from cases at JBS plants, and we did that intentionally,” she says. “There have been a lot of human rights violations, different abuse allegations, discrimination allegations that have come up across the history of the industry. But JBS, there are so many different examples”…
One solution, according to Sorvino, is to peel back the foundations of how we produce food. We need to embrace a plant-forward system for the animals and the planet, but food production, in general, also needs to get smaller, moving back into local communities. Essentially, we shouldn’t allow the growing plant-based meat industry to start mimicking the set-up of Big Meat, where a few companies reign supreme. SOURCE…
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