Industrial slaughterhouses have become COVID-19 clusters in the US

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Industrial slaughterhouses have become COVID-19 clusters in the US

23 April 2020
News
In the US, industrial slaughterhouses where hundreds of thousands of animals are killed every day, have become clusters of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here is a map to keep track of the problematic relationship between industrial animal agriculture and the rise of deadly pathogens. The spread of the pandemic in US slaughterhouses is yet another evidence that industrial farm animal agriculture is dangerous to humans, on top of being harmful to billions of farmed animals.

A beef plant in Colorado. A pork plant in Iowa. A hamburger plant in Pennsylvania. Since mid-March, outbreaks of Covid-19 have appeared in meatpacking facilities across the country, infecting hundreds of workers and killing nearly a dozen.

Now, the coronavirus has also reached workers in processed food facilities, which make frozen dinners, baked goods, and dairy products. Some plants have closed temporarily, and others indefinitely, but many remain open even as their workers fall ill in greater numbers.

The spread of the virus is affecting some of the country’s largest agribusiness companies, including Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, Conagra, Hormel, and Kraft Heinz. The map below shows the location of meat and food processing plants where cases of Covid-19 and/or deaths from the disease have been reported. (Hover over the icons for details on the plants).