A Public Affairs class assignment
Despite the connection between the meat market and the COVID-19 virus, there has been no substantial effect on the consumption of animal-based products.
As the pandemic nears its one year mark, millions of people have gotten used to a quarantined way of living. They don’t leave the house unless absolutely necessary, social outings are canceled and there are a lot of meals made in the safety of their own kitchen.
The Center for Disease Control announced in late August that it was not possible to contract the COVID-19 virus from food products themselves and only from person-to-person contact. However, a routine of rigorously washing all products bought from grocery stores was adopted in many homes.
This turned public attention to how the animal products they were purchasing was being handled, where investigations found horrible mistreatment of employees at meatpacking plants amid a deadly animal-borne virus.
Over one thousand Tyson Food Inc. factory workers in Iowa’s Black Hawk County have tested positive for COVID-19 as a result of poor working conditions and inadequate testing procedures.
The Des Moines Register also reported that a “betting pool” run by managers at the factory on how many employees would contract or die of COVID-19 is currently being investigated.
Despite the backlash that Tyson Foods is facing, there has not been a noticeable drop in sales or popularity. Of the few petitions for boycotts of Tyson that are circulating the internet, none have reached near 1,000 signatures.
The meat market overall has been able to stabilize itself as the pandemic has continued. When the market was hurt from the absence of restaurants that would normally buy their products, people in quarantine bought themselves the food that would normally be served to them as cooking at home became a new normal.
The United States Department of Agriculture published its report of market projections through 2029, which still predicts a steadily slow but positive growth for meat and dairy products for the next decade.
A predicted rise in the price of corn and soy productions, which takes up millions of miles of land around the world to feed the livestock populations, will make an impact. Less nutrition for the animals means a shorter life for them before they are slaughtered, which will increase the amount of meat in the market in the end.
“Rising slaughter weights due to efficiencies from nutrition and genetics will further support gains in beef production. Overall, beef production levels are expected to rise to 29.5 billion pounds by 2029,” the report stated.
Production of other meat products such as pork and poultry were also predicted to rise alongside beef.
The USDA’s prediction for milk and milk products are expected to do very well throughout the 2020s, the report saying that “commercial use of dairy products is expected to rise faster than the growth in the U.S. population over the next decade.”
While not a direct reason for the changes, the pandemic inadvertently made some problems in the dairy industry more noticeable.
“Milk consumption has been declining for many years,” USDA economic research Director of Communications Jennifer Smits said. “The aging population, substitution of other types of beverages, declining cereal consumption, and the changing ethnic makeup of the population.”
An aging population, Smits explained, refers to how children typically drink more milk than most adults. Most children drink milk when it is given to them regularly at schools for breakfast or lunch, but the pandemic has closed most of those schools.
“Lower in-person school attendance this year has contributed to lower milk consumption,” Smits said.
Dean Foods, a multi-billion dollar dairy company, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in November of 2019 and was recently bought out by the Dairy Farmers of America.
Sources who work at the DFA said that the bankruptcy and eventual purchase was not due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but instead due to consumer habits that have been choosing more non-dairy milk alternatives for years. The purchase taking place during the pandemic was only a strange coincidence.
Despite the coincidences, people who are advocating for a change in the meat and dairy industry are choosing to speak out to prevent a future tragedy linked to meat and dairy.
There is a paper trail of discussions regarding a plant-based world’s ability to prevent future pandemics from viruses such as COVID-19, but growing popularity for a plant-based diet overall was already in motion and conversations about prevention have only been in groups that are already vegan, leaving the markets unaffected overall.
“Someone who follows a vegan eating pattern,” Danielle Gemoets, a University of North Texas on-campus dietician and nutritionist said. typically includes only plant-based foods and omits animal products. This style of eating generally excludes meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, and other animal products, such as honey or foods made with gelatin.”
Before veganism had its name and popularity, it just was groups of non-dairy vegetarians scattered around the world. The word “vegan” wasn’t used until Donald Watson, founder of the Vegan Society, coined it in 1944. According to the society’s site, Watson chose ‘veg’ and ‘an’ from the full word ‘vegetarian’ taken as a literal representative of “the beginning and end of vegetarian.”
Vegans around the world omit animal products for various reasons such as environmental, health, culture or because of morals. But if it would be enough to prevent a pandemic is an unanswerable question.
When Swine Flu was spreading around, a 2009 opinion article from the US News opinion blog Thomas Jefferson Street stated, “every so often Mother Nature takes an opportunity to remind us that eating animals and/or factory farming eventually bite us back.”
The CDC reported that scientists estimate that over 6 of every 10 diseases originated from animals and 3 of every 4 new diseases will come from animals.
There are different extremes to a vegan diet depending on the person, but at its most basic definition, veganism is a diet and lifestyle consisting of no meat, dairy, or animal products.
Vegan influencers such as London native Ed Winters, popularly known as his social media handle, “Earthling Ed,” recently spoke out about if and how a worldwide vegan diet could have prevented deadly viruses that originated in animals – including COVID-19.
Founder of nutritionfacts.org and physician Dr. Michael Greger was invited onto episode 16 of Winters’ podcast, The Disclosure Podcast, to debate the likeliness of a COVID-19 free world if the meat market in Wuhan, China had never existed.
The episode summary included a brief history of Dr. Greger, mentioning his efforts to increase understanding about “the inextricable link between animal use and zoonotic disease.” Many people in the vegan community credit Dr. Greger for predicting the COVID-19 pandemic because of a 2008 speech he gave while he served as public health director at the Humane Society of the United States in Washington DC.
Without any applicable scenarios beyond hypotheticals, Winters’ and Dr. Greger’s claims cannot be proven or denied. A completely vegan or plant-based diet might not be a magical solution that could have prevented all animal-borne illnesses, but without the existence of meat markets, it is very likely that the viruses that originate there would not exist.
Currently, Winters’ and Dr. Greger’s calls to action are not reaching the people it needs to. A majority of Winters’ following were vegans before the pandemic, which limits the effect that an urge to go vegan has. Similarly to how Tyson will not lose many customers, veganism will not gain many supporters because of the pandemic.
“I think reducing the amount of animals we eat could help decrease the frequency of these awful events,” UNT student and vegan Megan Purcell said.
Even though the current pandemic has not made an impact on the meat and dairy industries, Purcell believes it should have and that it still might. The distance between countries and meat markets seems far, but illnesses travel fast.
Purcell also explained how a westernized point of view could have affected the perception that many people had about COVID-19. Because the virus originated in a meat market dealing with bats, an uncommonly used western meat, people are not overly concerned with limiting their consumption of chicken.
“Until the next pandemic or animal borne illness that hits closer to home with cows, pigs and chickens, we’ll probably see a lot bigger of an impact,” Purcell said.