By Richard Mellor in California
According to the chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health “The USDA’s [US Department of Agriculture] primary stakeholders are major food producers and manufacturers,”
Trump using the Defence Production Act to force the meat industry to stay open was a smart move on the part of the industry bosses and investors. Most likely, the idea never arose in Trump’s addled brain without a little help and that would have come from the industry lobbyists. Lobbying is a US political term for bribery, encouraging politicians to hand over taxpayer money for their clients.
Getting labour processes going again
There have been hundreds of thousands of pigs and chickens slaughtered during the coronavirus pandemic. But we should not be fooled into thinking that the pressure to keep the plants running has anything to do with the industry profiteers caring about working people. Like all the major corporations that are pushing to open up the economy (behind the scenes many of them) they must get the labour processes working again because it is the labour process, or more accurately, the labour aspect of it, that is the source of their profits.
According to Business Week, “Tyson Foods is offering workers s $500 bonus in May and another in July…” for good attendance. The working class produces more value in the labour process than it receives in wages. A portion of this surplus value is the capitalist’s profit. It is this that is behind the drive to open the economy from the capitalist’s point of view. Those who earn the most money in society produce the least value.
To foster the impression that workers’ health is paramount, Trump has directed Agricultural Secretary, Sonny Perdue, to “ensure that meat and poultry processors continue operations consistent with the guidance for their operations jointly issued by the CDC and OSHA.” Now tell me sisters, brothers, and comrades in the workplaces of the US; when did you last see the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) representatives wandering around your work area making sure you were safe? Exactly! You haven’t. OSHA turns up when workers die. The only way to make the workplace safer is workers’ organization and ultimately control of work itself.
I’m not trashing the inspectors here. On OSHA’s own website we can see why it has virtually no physical presence in the workplace unless tragedy hits, “Federal OSHA is a small agency; with our state partners we have approximately 2,100 inspectors responsible for the health and safety of 130 million workers, employed at more than 8 million worksites around the nation — which translates to about one compliance officer for every 59,000 workers.” Yet despite this pathetic presence the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are still opposed it. Nothing must stand in the way of profits. That’s what freedom is all about.
Companies fear lawsuits
The industry bosses are worried that if their workers or families get sick it will open the companies up to lawsuits. And they will get sick because in this industry, workers work very close together, elbow to elbow as they put it. “But with Trump citing national security, it’s easier for companies to say, ‘we’re just following orders’” says one industry analysis in Bloomberg Business Week. This lets the profiteers off the hook. They care about people, not profits, they would have us believe, but it will be the state, or the taxpayer more accurately, who will cover that end of the deal.
So as I write, lobbyists from all major industries are scurrying around Washington competing with each other for stimulus money, for taxpayer funds. It’s not just the meat industry wanting to change the rules. Saks Fifth Avenue, the fancy New York City store, has its lobbyists up there trying to bribe politicians to change the law so it can qualify for financial aid. The non-profit businesses (I don’t believe there is such a thing as a non-profit business) has their lobby, the American Society of Association Executives, trying to bargain for them, including local chapters of the “professional Golfers Association of America”.
Saks has hired a former top Senate aide who the company hopes will convince Senator Chuck Schumer to support their position. Saks’ main store is in Schumer’s district.
Savings and Loan scandal
Harry’s, the shaving company we see advertised all the time on the Internet has hired a former Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard to get them some state aid. Harry’s might do well, as Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s pale-faced cretin of a son-in-law is a Harry’s director. Literally, “…hundreds of retailers, commercial real estate firms and insurers want an ‘American Recovery Fund’” to assist with the rescue, the Wall Street Journal writes.
Folks might remember the Savings and Loan scandal and the Resolution Trust Corp. When the Savings and Loans went bankrupt the RTC took the worst of them and liquidated the assets and the best of them it sold back to the same folks who had caused the problem at bargain basement prices. The debt of the Savings and Loans was paid by the US taxpayer.
Second time in a decade
So they’re ‘all socialists now’, just as they were back in 2008 when US capitalism was dragged from the edge of the abyss by the taxpayers and social measures. This will be the second time in a decade that the US taxpayer has come to the rescue. The money that is being handed out in Washington now will have to be paid back by future generations. It is always the working class and our next generations that pay the price for capitalist crisis and waste.
The headline in the Wall Street Journal article just quoted is, “Lobbyists Step up Their Bid to Sway Virus Aid” and that says it all. Every US worker with a brain knows that lobbyists are a bunch of crooks, many of them former senators who retire and use their knowledge of the game to line their pockets and their corporate allies in industry.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in advertising and lobbying to encourage meat consumption. Beef alone is a $95 billion-a-year business, according to the USDA. And the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) estimates that in total the meat industry contributes about $894 billion to the US economy. Between 1990 and 2018, American farms increased food-animal production by nearly 66% to 103 billion pounds.
800 hamburgers a year
“Annualred-meat and poultry consumption in America will reach 222 pounds per person for the first time in 2018, according to food-availability estimates by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The numbers measure how food supplies move from production to retail for domestic consumption. At 222 pounds per person, overall meat consumption comes out to the equivalent of more than 800 quarter-pound burgers per person when measured by weight, or about 2.4 burgers per day.” From, “The average American will eat the equivalent of 800 hamburgers in 2018”
The US Department of Agriculture issues dietary guidelines but often reject suggestions made by experts in the field. The meat industry has historically had “huge influence” on the USDA, says Dr Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard.
Money and wealth is at the heart of this and the advocates for the investors and major food producers in the US determine what we eat, how we eat it and when. From the factory floor to the halls of the US Congress, they determine policy and both capitalist parties support them. It is this process, a market driven industrial food and agricultural industry that leads to disease like the coronavirus pandemic we are facing today.
Chemicals and hormones added to meat
The use of chemicals and hormones in the production of beef and other meats necessary for this type of food production, as with all commodity production, as the quicker it gets to market and the sale is made, the faster the rate of return of capital and the continuation of the cycle of madness.
Not only should we eat less meat, but the production of food should be a public not a private venture. All the institutions of government are designed to facilitate this unhealthy process and maintain a situation where a handful of corporations control what we eat.
“I was told we could never say ‘eat less meat’ because USDA would not allow it.” says Dr Marion Nestle, another health expert who participated in developing the USDA guidelines in the past. There you have it.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original, can be found here.
May 9, 2020
