Now they’ve got it: Huron turkey chopper Dakota Provisions has joined Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls and Demkota Beef in Aberdeen as a site of significant coronavirus concern:
“Yes, the Dakota Provisions, we do have cases associated with Dakota provisions,” State Epidemiologist Josh Clayton said. “we are working with that business specifically. We try to avoid talking about the number of cases within an individual business.”
He says that’s done until a business becomes a health concern or hotspot and they need to protect the public.
…The department of health reports 124 cases at the Demkota plant and 80 recoveries. They report 853 Smithfield workers tested positive and 836 have recovered. All 245 Smithfield close contacts have recovered [Todd Epp, “Huron Packing Plant Now Dealing with Coronavirus Cases,” KELO Radio, 2020.05.19].
Pork, beef, turkey… it seems like there’s an awful lot of worker health risk to mass-producing meat. Maybe it’s time to scale back, let those factory slaughterhouse workers disperse to more local butcher shops, and get more of our meat from smaller local sources.
Local butchering, early testing, quarantining of positive packing plant workers so they could work without fear of being infected. My daughter said those practices were key to why the Chinese meat supply was only minimally affected by COVID-19, aside from the pre-existing reduction in hog production due to African Swine Fever. The “wet markets” provide fresh meat and local produce. These are common in China, and most do not have the “bush meat” market associated with them, as in that one suspect market in Wuhan.
A mink farm in the Netherlands has animal to human Covid19 transmission. Kind of puts the blame game of China in a different light. We’re no closer to knowing where this virus came from, how long it has been in our systems and where we are without testing, testing, testing. We’ve the money for it so test.
“A worker at a mink farm in the Netherlands may have contracted the novel coronavirus from an animal there, the country’s agricultural minister said Wednesday.
The patient worked at two mink farms put under quarantine at the end of April after animals housed there tested positive for the virus. Researchers then mapped the genetic code of the virus in the infected animals and compared it to the virus in the worker.” Washington Post 5.20.2020
As long as we farm animals for consumption, both wild and fenced in, we’re gonna have these breakouts of virus. But, if we test and finance WHO and the CDC with the money and manpower, we can address it before it becomes a pandemic. Public health is the key, we need to demand it.
Are the families and folks that were in contact with these positive cases being told to self isolate for 14 days and are the people with the positive tests confined to their homes. Or how is the rest of the population in this area protected?
Wouldn’t it be worth mentioning that Huron had already cleared all 21 initial cases, then went over a month with no new cases ? I may be off by a few days, but we’ve had a spike of 44 new cases in just under a week. Maybe that bears looking into by the DOH.
It’s likely that all regional, rural butcher shops are having a resurgence.
https://www.bhpioneer.com/covid-19/local-butcher-shops-inundated-by-orders/article_ec034140-96fc-11ea-b1b5-b3e56dceb6f1.html
John, local butchers are dealing with huge backlogs everywhere. It’s a good thing for them and the people getting the meat. We need more of them.
Germany has laid down the law on slaughterhouses big time.
“The German government has announced a series of reforms of the meat industry, including a ban on the use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 (£26,000) for companies breaching labour regulations, as slaughterhouses have emerged as coronavirus hotspots.
A number of meat plants across the country have temporarily closed after hundreds of workers tested positive for Covid-19 in recent weeks.
This week more than 90 workers were reported to have fallen ill at a plant in Dissen, Lower Saxony. Following an outbreak at a plant in Coesfeld, where more than 270 of 1,200 workers tested positive, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia announced mass testing of industry employees.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/22/exploitative-conditions-germany-to-reform-meat-industry-after-spate-of-covid-19-cases
See how easy it is to provide safety at meat packing locations, all you need to do is have the understanding of how important it is to have a safe food supply line and then enforce that understanding.