Meat shortages: The wages of 'cheap' illegal labor

In 2004's preachy, much panned leftist mockumentary, A Day without a Mexican, the supposedly hypothetical scenario, about how California would fall apart if all its Mexicans, including illegals, somehow disappeared, was acted out. The film had a grand old time portraying white people as a bunch of soft, privileged fools, unable to clean even their own toilets.

This is annoying because it lumps most Americans into a stereotype of a typically feckless, over-monied limousine liberal, such as you might really find in Hollywood circles.

But it did raise the question of U.S. dependence on illegal foreign labor.

Seems we might just be experiencing that now with the big meat plant shutdowns, based on problems with much of the labor force being out with the coronavirus. The plants also are described in news reports as having an "immigrant" workforce. Based on the number of ICE chicken plant raids seen in recent news, it's very likely that these plants, too, may be dependent on illegal alien labor. With those workers now either out with COVID-19 or else in, and spreading it to others, the plants are going down. Worse still, industry consolidation means that these plants are now few in number, so nothing can pick up the slack. The shutdowns are expected to mean meat shortages at the groceries, curiously similar to Venezuela's.

According to the Associated Press:

Some massive meat processing plants have closed at least temporarily because their workers were sickened by the new coronavirus, raising concerns that there could soon be shortages of beef, pork and poultry in supermarkets.
The meat supply chain is especially vulnerable since processing is increasingly done at massive plants that butcher tens of thousands of animals daily, so the closure of even a few big ones can quickly be felt by customers. For instance, a Smithfield Foods plant that was forced to close in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after nearly 300 of the plant's 3,700 workers tested positive for the virus produces roughly 5% of the U.S. pork supply each day.
In addition, conditions at plants can be ripe for exploitation by the virus: Workers stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the line and crowd into locker rooms to change their clothes before and after shifts.

Just as the coronavirus crisis drove home the foolhardiness of corporate America outsourcing all of its manufacturing, including that of medicine, to China, so the upcoming meat shortages highlight the problem of dependency on a vast army of illegal "immigrant" labor for the nation's food processing. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit noted the problem here:

CONDITIONS AT MEAT-PROCESSING PLANTS NEED TO BE BETTER. IF THEY COULDN’T HIRE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, THEY’D HAVE TO BE BETTER TO ATTRACT WORKERS: Beef processors are closing U.S. plants, warn of beef shortages and hoarding.

>>Seems we might just be experiencing that now with the big meat plant shutdowns, based on problems with much of the labor force being out with the coronavirus.

Hire Americans.

saw an article from Louisiana that they couldn’t get cheap Mexican labor to peel and process crawfish.

Plenty of out of work Americans these days.

If meat cannot be processed it isn’t because of a lack of people able to do the work without Mexican labor.

there are social distancing requirements etc

DuncanWaring :" Smithfield (pork processing) is owned by the Chinese. "

My response, post #18 in an earlier OP :
Vigilanteman :" Executives from WH Group, Smithfield’s parent company in China . . . Vigilanteman :" WH Group, eh? Does the WH stand for Wuhan? "

The answer is at the end of the AMAC article :
"The 2013 purchase of Smithfield Foods by WH Group was at the time the largest acquisition of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm.
The purchase made WH Group—known as Shuanghui International at the time—the world’s largest pork producer.
The takeover was approved by the Obama administration." (Emphasis mine)

"The owner of WH Group, Wan Long, holds a seat on the National People’s Congress, the legislature of the CCP.
Wan’s path to dominance in China’s pork market .. according to an account by the state-run news agency Xinhua, cited by The Wall Street Journal.
Li is now the second-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP." (Emphasis mine)

My Comments : The Chinese nation had an outbreak of porkvirus last year that took over 1/3 of all newborn pigletts, nationwide (as admitted by the Chinese government).
This is a significant issue as pork products represent the second most popular protein source in Chinese food.
Also, due to the Chinese pork virus, prior to this coronavirus infection of factory workers in South Dakota,
Smithfield had announced that much of the pork product would be shipped to China,
thus causing a pork shortage in the US, and to expect rising pork prices.

This virus presents an opportunity to destroy the open-borders, cheap labor, globalists. They are going to try to distract everyone by rattling their sabers against China. This is assuming that our entire society isn’t going to collapse in the coming months from this Globalist Disease.

Somehow, in our “economics is everything” pseudo-religion of the past 30 years, “you get what you pay for” got left out. That free lunch doesn’t exist in the labor market any more than it does anywhere else.

The Smithfield pork plants are union, I doubt many there are illegals.”””

YOU would be WRONG.

The unions only care about membership. They don’t give a hoot about a persons citizenship status.

The SEIU Union was started by illegals & is majority illegals.

“Instead of buying from “plants”, can’t people buy from their local butcher?”

It depends on the state laws on butchering and processing meat.

You used to be able to take a hog, beef, etc. to the local butcher and they would call you when it was wrapped and frozen.

Liberals went wild on laws and now everything has to go to a slaughter house and then back to the butcher.

If you’re lucky you MIGHT get your hog back, minus all the parts they will steal. You are unlikely to get any lard and the whole hog will be skinned, so hams and bacon will look funny when you get it.

You are better off just raising your hogs/beef to be ready in late fall/early winter and butcher them yourself when the weather is cool.

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