Having Turkey For The Holidays? Thank The Nation's Meatpackers, Sen. Cory Booker Says

NEWARK, NJ — As families and friends across New Jersey gather for their holiday meals this winter, many will be giving thanks for their blessings – including the ubiquitous turkey dinner that has become synonymous with Thanksgiving and Christmas. But according to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, it’s also time to give thanks to the people who made those beloved memories possible in the first place: the nation’s meatpackers and farm workers.

Last week – just before the Thanksgiving holiday – Booker and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California introduced the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act, a proposed federal law that would beef up workplace protections for meat and poultry processing workers.

Booker, a Newark resident and one of New Jersey’s most well-known vegans, released a statement about why the bill is needed:

“Our nation’s food system has long been broken, but the COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on just how broken the system truly is for workers, farmers and ranchers, animals, and consumers. Unfortunately, the workers responsible for getting food from the farm to our table are often overlooked and underappreciated. It is clear that our food system is not safe for most farm and food chain workers including meatpacking workers that, due to the power and influence of large multinational corporations, have been forced to risk their lives, crowded into meatpacking plants that became hotbeds for COVID-19 outbreaks. In fact, recent reports indicate that over 59,000 meatpacking workers employed by JBS, Tyson, Smithfield, Cargill, and National Beef contracted COVID-19, and at least 269 died.”

Booker continued:

“The Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act would provide much needed protections for meatpacking workers along with systemic reforms such as creating a fair market that allows independent farmers, ranchers and robust local food systems to thrive and ensuring that consumers can actually identify where their food comes from so that food giants cannot simply shift the burden of their unfair system to others in the supply chain or import more unsustainable meat from other parts of the world.”

Here are some of the things the bill would do if passed, Booker said:

Protect meat and poultry workers

• Prevent the Secretary of Agriculture from issuing line speeds waivers unless meat and poultry plants agree to a USDA inspection which must show that an increase in line speeds will not adversely impact worker safety
• Establish occupational safety and health standards to protect employees in meat and poultry plants
• Implement a regional emphasis inspection program for meat and poultry plants which will cover multiple aspects of worker safety including amputation hazards, ergonomics, and hazards related to line speeds, bathroom breaks, use of certain antimicrobials, and temperatures of work sites
• Allow meat or poultry plant employees the ability to authorize a representative, who may be a member of a worker-based community group, to accompany physical inspections
• Strengthen existing protections against retaliation from employers when employees refuse to perform work duties under conditions of reasonable apprehension and sets up a system wherein employees may file a complaint in the event retaliation has occurred
• Establish a standardized, publicly available, reporting process for use during pandemics, which will require meat or poultry plants to report the number of employees who have become ill, their racial demographics, and their employment status

Reform the farm system

• Require that all grants funded under USDA AMS for Expanded Meat & Poultry Processing include labor peace agreements and prohibiting small processing plants that received a grant from being sold to meat and poultry packers with over 10 percent of market share for a period of 10 years
• Strengthen the Packers & Stockyards Act to crack down on the monopolistic practices of meatpackers and corporate integrators
• Restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements

“As we sit down with family and friends this Thanksgiving, let it also be a day of gratitude for the workers who have worked tirelessly to ensure we have food on our tables,” Booker said. “Unfortunately, meatpacking workers, including those processing the turkeys on the plates of many Americans this week, often face exploitative and dangerous work conditions.”

“We must end this era of abusive practices and begin to ensure that all workers, farmers, and ranchers have a safe and fair opportunity to earn a living,” Booker urged.

Khanna, who is sponsoring the House version of the bill, said the coronavirus pandemic has publicly exposed the “dangerous conditions” that meatpackers employed by large multinational corporations face. But it’s been a problem for a long time, Khanna charged.

“It’s time to prioritize people over profits and implement real reforms that will keep workers safe,” Khanna added.

The bill has picked up co-sponsors in the Senate that include Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. A list of organizations endorsing the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act can be seen here.

• See related article: U.S. Food System Was 'Broken' Long Before Coronavirus, Senators Say

PROPOSED PESTICIDE BANS

On the same day that Booker introduced the Protecting America’s Meatpacking Workers Act, he also released details about another legislative effort aimed at reforming the nation’s food system: the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act of 2021.

If it becomes law, the bill would update the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act of 1972 by banning several pesticides that Booker alleged are “scientifically proven to harm the safety of people and our environment.”

According to the senator, those substances include:

• Organophosphate insecticides, which are designed to target the neurological system and have been linked to neurodevelopmental damage in children
• Neonicotinoid insecticides, which have contributed to pollinator collapse around the world (the European Union and Canada have significantly restricted or banned their use to protect pollinators and other wildlife) and have recently been shown to cause developmental defects, heart deformations, and muscle tremors in unborn children
• Paraquat, which is one of the most acutely toxic herbicides in the world —according to the EPA, just “one sip can kill.” Science has shown that chronic exposure to paraquat increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 200% to 600%. It is already banned in 32 countries, including the European Union.

Booker said the lives and health of farmworkers across the nation are at stake.

“Each year, the United States uses over a billion pounds of pesticides — nearly a fifth of worldwide use,” the senator said. “Once they’re approved, pesticides often remain on the market for decades, even when scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows a pesticide is causing harm to people or the environment.

In 2017 and 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency registered more than 100 pesticides containing ingredients widely considered to be dangerous, Booker pointed out.

But many other potentially harmful pesticides remain in use throughout the nation, he added.

“Approximately one-third of annual U.S. pesticide use — over 300 million pounds from 85 different pesticides — comes from pesticides that are banned in the European Union,” Booker said.

According to Booker, some other things the bill would do include:

• Creating a petition process to enable individual citizens to petition the EPA to identify dangerous pesticides so that the EPA would no longer be able to indefinitely allow dangerous pesticides to remain on the market
• Closing dangerous loopholes that have allowed the EPA to issue emergency exemptions and conditional registrations to use pesticides before they have gone through full health and safety review by the agency
• Enabling local communities to enact protective legislation and other policies without being vetoed or preempted by state law
• Suspending the use of pesticides deemed unsafe by the E.U. or Canada until they are thoroughly reviewed by the EPA
• Requiring employers of farmworkers to report all pesticide-caused injuries to the EPA, with strong penalties for failure to report injuries or retaliating against workers
• Directing the EPA to review pesticide injury reports and work with the pesticide manufacturers to develop better labeling to prevent future injury
• Requiring that all pesticide label instructions be written in Spanish and in any language spoken by more than 500 pesticide applicators

‘BIGGER THAN INDIVIDUAL CHOICES’

The following day, Booker made a push for another federal bill he introduced earlier this year: the Farm System Reform Act. If passed, it would place an immediate moratorium on new and expanding factory farms (also known as CAFOs), phasing out the largest by 2040.

• See related article: Time To Fix A 'Broken' U.S. Farm System, Cory Booker Says

“With Thanksgiving a few days away, it’s time for an important conversation about our country’s food system,” Booker wrote in an email.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed factory farms for what they are — bad for our farmers, consumers, animals, the environment, and public health,” Booker continued. “They are breeding grounds for animal abuse and disease, and experts warn that infections, diseases and even full-blown pandemics can be born in these massive, cramped warehouses of livestock.”

“In the early stages of the pandemic, the supply chain nearly failed due to hyper consolidation of our livestock and meat supply chain,” Booker said. “Hundreds of meat processing workers died of COVID … All while multinational meatpackers are making record profits during the pandemic and continuing to influence federal farm policy.”

“You might know that I'm a vegan, but this is so much bigger than individual choices,” Booker concluded. “This is about a system that exploits workers, abuses animals, harms our environment, rips off consumers, and funnels the benefits to a small slice of corporations at the top.”

• See related article: New Jersey Senator Continues His Beef With The Beef Industry

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