{"id":3118,"date":"2020-05-08T19:58:52","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T19:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/?page_id=3118"},"modified":"2022-03-18T13:21:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T13:21:51","slug":"05-08","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/05-08\/","title":{"rendered":"05-08"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Friday, May 8<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUS Cases 1.3 million
US Deaths 80,693<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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-Unemployment climbs<\/a> <\/span>to 14.7 percent. The Office of Special Counsel<\/a>,<\/span> an independent and prosecutorial agency within the government,\u00a0recommends\u00a0<\/a><\/span>reinstating Dr. Rick Bright as Director of BARDA. Protestors across the country demand further action<\/a><\/span> in the case of Ahmaud Arbery.
Venezuela charges<\/a> <\/span>captured former U.S. soldiers with terrorism.*<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tFrom the cutting room floor...\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Dairy farmers in Wisconsin are dumping milk. No one knows how much, exactly, but you can see the mound of empty containers piled up next to the railroad tracks. Farmers had pulled the milk right off a freight car and poured out into the dirt. It looks like a creamier Boston Tea Party. They are desperate because the price of milk has plummeted, and they are losing money with each shipment. The threat of real violence hangs in the air if local government officials don\u2019t figure out a way to help the farmers who are throwing out their worthless milk. Vandals have already taken to local dairy processing plants and cheese factories. They doused hundreds of pounds of cheese in kerosene and lit a bonfire. Others barricaded roads with logs, farming equipment, even their own bodies, to stop milk deliveries. The governor considered calling up the Wisconsin National Guard to keep roads open and too much milk from being wasted. Near Manitowoc, some right-winged hooligans came in the night and burned a cross at a farm because the owner continued to supply milk. Another farmer, H.M. Clark, had his eye knocked out in a tear gas attack.<\/span><\/p>

That was 1933.[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>

This year, 87 years later, farmers are dumping milk again. Millions of gallons, according to some reports.<\/span>[2]<\/a> Unlike in 1933, the problem isn\u2019t a drop in demand, per se; now it is the breakdown of the complicated supply chain that is unable to get the milk to changing market. With schools and the restaurants closed, dairy processors cannot deliver milk wholesale like they used to. Instead, the demand for milk and cheese has shifted to the grocery stores. Unfortunately, it is difficult and costly for suppliers to switch to this new market. Dairy products have to be packaged differently for grocery retail sales and they have to be transported by truck drivers\u2014who are quitting in droves. Further up the chain, dairy farmers all over America are sitting on milk that the dairy producers won\u2019t buy because they can\u2019t get it to grocery stores. As a macroeconomic consequence, Class III milk futures fell in April to their lowest levels in a decade.<\/span>[3]<\/a><\/span><\/p>

[read_more id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]<\/span><\/p>

While it seems like a once-every-depression activity, milk dumping is not that rare. According to futures contracts, the dairy business lost its George W. Bush-era buzz alongside the \u201908\u2013\u201909 financial collapse, came roaring back to new highs in 2014, then slipped into multi-year doldrums. It reached a new peak just this past winter.\u00a0 In between those two high points, dairy farmers dumped milk repeatedly in order to keep supplies down and prices up. In the fall of 2016, overproduction again caused a drop in prices. Angry farmers in agricultural states that used to be solidly Democratic, like Wisconsin, dumped 43 million gallons of milk\u2014right before heading to the polls.[4]<\/a> Much of the time between 2014 and 2020, in fact, has been hard on smaller midwestern dairy farmers, while larger agribusinesses take advantage of persistently low prices and lobbying operations in state capitals to gobble up the leftovers.[5]<\/a><\/span><\/p>

The sad part is that, despite farmer\u2019s woes on the fields, prices for milk in my grocery store have shot up 50%.[6]<\/a> That\u2019s true of eggs and ground beef, too. From what I hear, some of that is actual price gouging during a panic.[7]<\/a> I can see that the posh Publix grocery in town has raised its prices noticeably more than the\u00a0 Piggly Wiggly on the west side of town.<\/span><\/p>

The meat shortage is so widespread that even Wendy\u2019s is feeling the pinch. This week, their burgers sold out for the first time in their history.[8]<\/a> Everyone I talked to on Zoom today repeated the \u201cWhere\u2019s the Beef?!\u201d line from the 1980s commercial. I swear all of them thought of that line in the shower and were waiting until the Zoom call that I happened to be on to say it (assuming they took showers, which, on further consideration, they probably didn\u2019t because: coronavirus). One guy who said it and got no response from everyone during the noisy opening moments of the call waited until a quieter moment to roll it out a second time.<\/span><\/p>

Perhaps most disturbing is the way that the meat processing companies like Tyson are using the shortage to justify the unsafe conditions of their workers. On April 26, John Tyson, billionaire grandson of the founder, published full-page ads in The New York Times<\/em> and The Washington Post<\/em> stressing that the meat chain was breaking. The \u201cresponsibility\u201d to get meat into American\u2019s mouths is \u201cas essential as healthcare,\u201d says this man who will make millions more from having Americans Hamsterkauf<\/em> their meat.[9]<\/a> He claims management is working as hard as they can to make things safe, but they will not hit the pause button to properly set up their line workers\u2019 stations or give them anything extra when they come down with COVID.[10]<\/a> And when a billionaire wells up with \u2026 we\u2019ll insert \u201cpatriotic tears\u201d here \u2026 it seems as though this president can\u2019t move fast enough to oblige him. The White House issued an Executive Order within hours stipulating that, \u201ccomplete closure of some large processing facilities\u2026 may differ from or be inconsistent with\u2026 providing for the safe operation of such facilities.\u201d[11]<\/a> Effectively, it made agricultural production a national defense issue. Like good soldiers, meat factory line workers must be prepared to do whatever it takes to defend the country\u2019s meat eating habits. In some cases, this means working on the job without adequate protection while actually sick with COVID.[12]<\/a> Data shows hundreds<\/em> of workers at thirty-one major meatpacking plants owned by Smithfield, JBS, and Tyson spread across the middle of the country have come down with COVID. This might explain why John Tyson had to rebrand his business as \u201cThe Protein Company\u201d and his workers as necessary casualties. It is a testament to the Washington Post <\/em>(the print version, anyway) that they sandwiched the Tyson ad between a story with the headline, \u201cWorkers say meat plants pushed them to show up ill,\u201d with a photo of people carrying the casket of an employee.[13]<\/a> \u03a9<\/span><\/p>

When Upton Sinclair published The Jungle<\/em>, his famous expose of the turn-of-the-century Chicago meatpacking industry, he certainly disturbed the average hot dog eating American. But it led to Teddy Roosevelt-era regulations in food cleanliness, not better working conditions. All of that had to wait for milk dumping, cheese burning Wisconsin farmers and a different Roosevelt as president. Sinclair hoped The Jungle<\/em> would help tear down \u201cthe incarnation of blind and insensate greed \u2026 the Great Butcher \u2026 the spirit of capitalism made flesh.\u201d[14]<\/a> To his chagrin, he found that mnay middle-class Americans were really interested in learning \u201cWhere\u2019s the Beef?!\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Notes<\/p>

[1]<\/a> Rick Barrett, \u201cThe Milk Strikes of 1933 Were the Worst Year for Wisconsin Dairy Farms, and Culminated in a Farmer\u2019s Death,\u201d Pulitzer Center, May 17, 2019, https:\/\/pulitzercenter.org\/reporting\/milk-strikes-1933-were-worst-year-wisconsin-dairy-farms-and-culminated-farmers-death.<\/span><\/p>

[2]<\/a> P.J. Huffstutter, \u201cU.S. Dairy Farmers Dump Milk as Pandemic Upends Food Markets,\u201d Reuters<\/em>, April 4, 2020, https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-health-coronavirus-dairy-insight-idUSKBN21L1DW; Aarian Marshall, \u201cFarmers Are Dumping Milk, Even as People Go Hungry. Here\u2019s Why,\u201d Wired<\/em>, April 23, 2020, https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/why-farmers-dumping-milk-people-hungry\/; Leighton Schneider, \u201cDairy Farmers Dumping Milk amid COVID-19: Pandemic\u2019s Impact on the Dairy Industry,\u201d ABC News, April 21, 2020, https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/dairy-farmers-dumping-milk-amid-covid-19-pandemics\/story?id=70268302.<\/span><\/p>

[3]<\/a> barchart, \u201cClass III Milk Historical Prices,\u201d Barchart.com, daily, https:\/\/www.barchart.com\/futures\/quotes\/DLQ20\/historical-prices.<\/span><\/p>

[4]<\/a> Kelsey Gee, \u201cAmerica\u2019s Dairy Farmers Dump 43 Million Gallons of Excess Milk,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/em>, October 12, 2016, https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/americas-dairy-farmers-dump-43-million-gallons-of-excess-milk-1476284353.<\/span><\/p>

[5]<\/a> Rick Barrett, Chris Mueller, and Keith Uhlig, \u201cWisconsin Dairy Crisis: How Four Farms Reflect the Depth of Industry\u2019s Struggles with Low Milk Prices,\u201d Milwaukee Journal Sentinel<\/em>, December 20, 2019, https:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/news\/special-reports\/dairy-crisis\/2019\/12\/20\/wisconsin-dairy-crisis-how-four-farms-reflect-depth-industrys-struggles-low-milk-prices\/2675964001\/.<\/span><\/p>

[6]<\/a> John Matarese, \u201cMilk Prices Soar, While Farmers Are Dumping It,\u201d WCPO ABC 9, April 13, 2020, https:\/\/www.wcpo.com\/money\/consumer\/dont-waste-your-money\/milk-prices-soar-while-farmers-are-dumping-it.<\/span><\/p>

[7]<\/a> Jake Bittle, \u201cBeef Producers Are Grinding up Their Nicest Steaks, While Retailers Can\u2019t Meet Demand for Cheaper Cuts,\u201d The Counter, May 6, 2020, https:\/\/thecounter.org\/beef-producers-grinding-steaks-ground-beef-coronavirus-covid-19-usda\/; Neil MacFarquhar, \u201cAre You Paying Extra for Eggs? Lawsuits Accuse Producers of Price Gouging,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, May 7, 2020, sec. U.S., https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/05\/06\/us\/coronavirus-eggs-price-gouging-lawsuit.html.<\/span><\/p>

[8]<\/a> David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery, \u201cA Wendy\u2019s With No Burgers as Meat Production Is Hit,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, May 5, 2020, sec. Business, https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/05\/05\/business\/coronavirus-meat-shortages.html.<\/span><\/p>

[9]<\/a> Gregory Meyer, \u201cJohn Tyson Laments Breakdown of Meat System His Family Pioneered,\u201d May 1, 2020, https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/82c2f5fa-1070-4388-853b-a2ed430fbf04.<\/span><\/p>

[10]<\/a> The Economist, \u201cIn America, the Virus Threatens a Meat Industry That Is Too Concentrated,\u201d The Economist<\/em>, April 30, 2020, https:\/\/www.economist.com\/united-states\/2020\/04\/30\/in-america-the-virus-threatens-a-meat-industry-that-is-too-concentrated.<\/span><\/p>

[11]<\/a> The White House, \u201cExecutive Order on Delegating Authority Under the DPA with Respect to Food Supply Chain Resources During the National Emergency Caused by the Outbreak of COVID-19,\u201d The White House, April 28, 2020, https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/executive-order-delegating-authority-dpa-respect-food-supply-chain-resources-national-emergency-caused-outbreak-covid-19\/.<\/span><\/p>

[12]<\/a> Taylor Telford and Kimberly Kindy, \u201cAs They Rushed to Maintain U.S. Meat Supply, Big Processors Saw Plants Become Covid-19 Hot Spots, Worker Illnesses Spike,\u201d The Washington Post<\/em>, April 25, 2020, https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2020\/04\/25\/meat-workers-safety-jbs-smithfield-tyson\/.<\/span><\/p>

[13]<\/a> \u201cWorkers say meat plants pushed them to show up while ill,\u201d Washington Post<\/em>, April 26, 2020, p. A12.<\/span><\/p>

[14]<\/a> Chicago Tribune, \u201c\u2018I AIMED FOR THE PUBLIC\u2019S HEART, AND\u2026HIT IT IN THE STOMACH,\u2019\u201d The Chicago Tribune<\/em>, May 21, 2006, https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/ct-xpm-2006-05-21-0605210414-story.html.<\/span>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cNavajo COVID-19 PSA\u201d by artist Jetsonorama photographed outside of Tuba City, Arizona, in early May 2020.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGoodluck, Kalen. \u201cCOVID-19 Impacts Every Corner of the Navajo Nation.\u201d High Country News, May 19, 2020. https:\/\/www.hcn.org\/issues\/52.6\/covid-19-impacts-every-corner-of-the-navajo-nation.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tClass III Milk futures contract prices 2000 to 2020, https:\/\/www.barchart.com\/futures\/quotes\/DLQ20\/historical-prices\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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“Sen. Ted Cruz refuses Dallas News Questions, about punishment for Shelley Luther,” Dallas Morning News (May 8, 2020),\u00a0https:\/\/youtu.be\/LwStHiywEaA<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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“Northern California dairy farmers dumping milk,” ABC10 (Apr. 7, 2020), https:\/\/www.abc10.com\/article\/news\/local\/local-dairies-starting-to-dump-extra-milk-supplies\/103-98ae6488-9770-4806-bb4b-647ca7c22cca<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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“Farm News Five: Farmers begin dumping milk, while greenhouses remain closed,” Michigan Farm Bureau (Apr. 10, 2020),\u00a0https:\/\/youtu.be\/10riKF9J2jE<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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NPR, “What Workers Are Saying At A Meatpacking Plant Closed Due To Coronavirus Outbreak,” All Things Considered, 4\/17\/20<\/h5>\n