We know how we get our food to our table. To get it cheaply we rely on exploited workers. The economics of the food industry needs analysing whilst it is under the spotlight of Covid 19. Note suggestions for us to consider https://sustainablefoodfilm.com
Firstly, in the UK, once volunteers were called for to help bring in produce from the fields, replacing the usual migrant workers due to Covid 19 restrictions, they were asked to live in the close quartered, unpleasant farm buildings where desperate migrant workers lived during their seasonal work. Most volunteers refused to take up the work once they saw the dangers of possibly picking up the virus whilst working in the fields and living in unsanitary conditions. So a special government policy was brought to bear to allow the migrants in, mostly from Bulgaria and Romania. The farmers were relieved to sell their produce which they had feared would have to be thrown away if no one picked it.
“Documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show that a powerful corporate lobby front group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is playing a leading role in the right-wing movement to push for early reopening of the economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic that has cost the United States 61,680 lives to date.”
June 2020 US outbreaks among vegetable packing workers
“Meanwhile, coronavirus cases near tomato-growing Immokalee, Florida, are also on the rise. The spread of the coronavirus among Florida farm workers has significant implications for national food production, as many agricultural workers travel north through the summer following the harvest through Georgia, the Carolinas, and into the Northeast.”
July 2020, outbreak amongst vegetable workers at A S Green in Herefordshire, England
It employs about 200 seasonal pickers and packers from Eastern Europe to help with the crop.
“We confirm that we are working closely with, Public Health England and the Public Health team at Herefordshire Council to support a number of our workers that have tested positive for COVID-19. As a precautionary measure we have arranged for testing of additional key workers including management team members and visitors connected with A S Green and can confirm all results to date outside of our site have been returned with negative results. To date there are 73 positive cases on our site.”
It is suggested rigorous testing is urgently needed to accurately test food which may contain SARS coV-2 as a result of a worker with the virus contaminating the food before it reaches the consumer. Testing workers is a number 1 priority. Testing food before it is packaged and despatched is the second priority.
Many countries, such as the USA, rely on undocumented, immigrant workers to maintain their food supply chain. There are about 175,000 in the USA. Often unable to speak English, intimidated by the gangs who organise them and their employers, desperate for money to live and to one day enjoy life without fear, these people may fall ill but dare not stop working or tell their employers they feel ill.
“Still, most jobs are rural, limiting workers’ access to lawyers, favorable union laws and other jobs. Hourly pay averages as low as $12.50 for backbreaking work, often conducted side-by-side. Workers who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas fear deportation for speaking up.
“Vulnerable populations work well for them,” Joshua Specht, a University of Notre Dame professor, said of the industry.”
Consumers are now nervous about eating pre-packaged food which may carry infections, though some experts have said they have no reason to believe Covid-19 can be passed on this way.
As we all now know, if we didn’t before, meat is processed by workers who are forced to operate in close proximity. As a result many have succumbed to Covid 19.
“Latino communities and all communities of color in the U.S. are being affected disproportionately by the spread of coronavirus,” LULAC said in its report. “How the government responds will impact the Latino community for years to come and set a precedent for how the U.S. government responds during times of crisis and how it deals with the exigent needs of underserved communities of color.”
According to the report, some of the steps that should be taken in response to the pandemic are local and federal collection of ethnic and racial cases and deaths, the publication of immediate, critical information in Spanish, immediate temporary protective status for undocumented people working in the health fields and as essential workers, funding for small business loans and the release of immigrant detainees.
“We need to make sure we close those inequities,” Garcia said. “Otherwise, we are going to have a disproportionate impact on the Latino community in the United States.”
It was obvious that when people have no choice but to work in close proximity, such as medical professionals, they are in need of the highest form of protection. We have seen many such workers die from Covid 19, mostly due to the delay of adequate protection as their governments were too slow to react with vital health and safety measures.
It is till taking far too long for workers, who find themselves in unsafe environments, to have their work environment made safe for them to work without fear. These could be, for example, garment makers, oil workers, agricultural workers, coal miners and those who work in food markets. Those who work in food processing plants not only have suffered unsafe environments, but often, when the factory is forced to close, lose their vital employment and there is usually no safety net to provide income. Yet the conglomerates who own these massive plants will demand corporate welfare and will rarely share that with their workers.
In January 2020, despite Covid 19, red meat exports were holding steady in New Zealand:
“As of Friday 19 June, almost 24 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Brazil’s southern Rio Grande do Sul state were workers in the local meat industry, according to labour prosecutors and state health data.”
“Outbreaks in meat processing plants have been common features of the pandemic, with research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) showing that after ships and workers’ dormitories food processing factories have been responsible for the biggest localised outbreaks.”
“Rowan Foods Wrexham is the latest food factory to be hit by a major coronavirus outbreak. An Asda meat factory has also been closed after an outbreak ”
“Scientists believe they may have found contributing factors that led to the country’s biggest single outbreak at an abattoir in North Rhine-Westphalia – cold temperatures and an insufficient air filtration system that allowed the pathogen to spread rapidly.”
Heil told the broadcast: “The exploitation of people from Central and Eastern Europe, which has obviously taken place there, is now becoming a general health risk in the pandemic with considerable damage.” Therefore, “there has to be a fundamental change in this industry.”
Selected countries meat consumption as of 2014:
Renewed outbreaks since lockdown eased, June 23rd 2020:
“Coronavirus latest: Fresh lockdown for German district after meat-packing outbreak”
The Coronoravirus epidemic has highlighted many inequalities in society – the poorest are hit hardest by the consequences of the disease. I will add to this blog as I research it, but do not want to delay its publication as matters are so dire for thousands of people in the world.
My suggestion:
It seems to me that remuneration at the top management needs to be reduced back to where it once was, when multiples of the average employee wage was not extreme. Let the money to all employees be increased substantially using freed up capital, be they public or private sector. For those without employment, fulfil the 1947 Maslow Hierarchy of Needs using a universal approach. We can’t beat what Maslow suggested. Every person is to be valued, and each will contribute in ways that improve the community in which they live with the right investment and encouragement.
Article explaining the added impetus by One Fair Wage campaign to engage the industry in providing decent wages to all workers.
This image taken 2019. A long running sore. Now many voices call for such symbols to no longer affront the daily lives of those whose ancestors helped build America (and previous empires of the world) with their suffering.
Now statues are being torn down or desecrated because the matter has not been addressed.
June 13, 2020
CONTACT:
NCAIPress@ncai.org
NCAI Statement on the Removal of Christopher Columbus Statues
WASHINGTON, DC | The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization in the country, does not acknowledge Christopher Columbus as a hero. To Indigenous peoples, he was the opposite:
[O]ut of timbers for the Santa Maria, . . . Columbus built a fort [on Hispaniola], the first European military base in the Western Hemisphere. . . . He took . . . Indian prisoners and put them aboard his two remaining ships. . . . [H]e got into a fight with Indians who refused to trade as many bows and arrows as he and his men wanted. Two were run through with swords and bled to death. Then the Nina and the Pinta set sail. . . . When the weather turned cold, the Indian prisoners began to die. . . .
In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale. . . .
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 3-4 (1980 Ed.).
“This growing movement across the country to rid our shared spaces of symbols that represent hate, genocide, and bigotry illustrates that it is past time for all cities to stand on the right side of history moving forward,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp.
NCAI also strongly supports the recent actions taken by United States citizens and the international community calling for proper law enforcement reforms and the recognition of basic human rights for the African American community and all communities of color. We are humbled that these voices are including Indian Country’s perspectives. NCAI encourages local governments and their citizens to seek mutual understandings of their diverse perspectives and to develop peaceful solutions that are mindful of all human beings and our rich distinct and shared histories. Together we can build the tomorrow our children deserve to lead.
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About the National Congress of American Indians:
Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians is the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization in the country. NCAI advocates on behalf of tribal governments and communities, promoting strong tribal-federal government-to-government policies, and promoting a better understanding among the general public regarding American Indian and Alaska Native governments, people and rights. For more information, visit http://www.ncai.org.
National Congress of American Indians
Embassy of Tribal Nations
National Congress of American Indians | Embassy of Tribal Nations, 1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
“So, while there is little evidence that Trump and his supporters value human life, they do value statues, especially statues of anarchists: Confederate soldiers, slave owners, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan — a terrorist group — and Trump’s “hero,” Andrew Jackson, a leader in ethnic cleansing. “
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and Native Organizations Encouraged by Recent Decision in Mashpee v. Bernhardt and Now Call on DOI for Recommitment to Tribal Sovereignty.
Yesterday, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia rendered a decision in favor of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in the case of Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe v. Bernhardt. In its opinion, Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled:
The Court will grant the Mashpee Tribe’s motion for summary judgment and deny the federal defendants’ and defendant-intervenors’ motions for summary judgment. Furthermore, because the Secretary of the Interior’s September 7, 2018 Record of Decision is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law, the Court remands the matter to the Secretary of the Interior for a thorough reconsideration and re-evaluation of the evidence before him consistent with this Opinion, the 2014 M-Opinion, M-37209 – its standard and the evidence permitted therein – and the Department’s prior decisions applying the M-Opinion’s two-part test.
For the first time since the termination era, the Department of the Interior (DOI) attempted to disestablish a Tribal reservation, ordering the homelands of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to be taken out of trust. The order from DOI Secretary David Bernhardt came on March 27, 2020, as the Tribal Nation worked to respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency, during active litigation on the status of the land, and following the rescission of the 2014 Carcieri M-Opinion and the issuance of a new 4-part test to qualify under the first definition of “Indian” in the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). On March 30, 2020, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe asked the Court to issue an emergency restraining order to prevent DOI from taking immediate action to disestablish its reservation.
“The DC District Court righted what would have been a terrible and historic injustice by finding that the Department of the Interior broke the law in attempting to take our land out of trust,” said Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chairman, Cedric Cromwell. “We will continue to work with the Department of the Interior — and fight them if necessary — to ensure our land remains in trust.”
The Court ruled DOI’s 2018 decision that the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe did not prove it was “under federal jurisdiction” in 1934, and therefore did not meet the first definition of “Indian” under the IRA—making the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe ineligible to acquire land in trust—was arbitrary and capricious. It remanded the decision to DOI with clear direction to issue a decision consistent with the 2014 M-Opinion’s standard and the evidence permitted therein, as well as DOI’s prior decisions applying the 2014 M-Opinion test. The Court further directed DOI to properly address each piece of evidence, give a reasoned analysis as to whether it is probative, explain any departure from past DOI precedent, and view all probative evidence in concert rather than in isolation. And importantly, the Court’s decision also mandates that DOI maintain the land in trust pending DOI’s new determination and prevents DOI from applying its new 4-part test in this case.
“USET SPF is pleased that the Court acted swiftly and justly to provide necessary certainty to the Mashpee Wampanoag in these uncertain times,” said USET SPF President, Kirk Francis. “The Department of the Interior was under no order to take the land out of trust, and so to attempt to rob the Mashpee of their homelands is nothing short of shameful. The Department should be assisting Tribal Nations as we work to reestablish our homelands after centuries of federal action designed to assimilate and terminate. Instead, actions by this Administration are aimed at perpetuating antiquated and regressive federal policies, resulting in the destabilization of our governments. While we celebrate this victory with Mashpee and all of Indian Country today, the centuries-long fight to protect and restore Tribal homelands is ongoing and we must remain steadfast in our vigilance. We continue to stand with Mashpee as the Department reexamines its evidence on remand.”
“On behalf of the National Congress of American Indians, we congratulate the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe on their historic victory. We consider this a win for all of Indian Country,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp. “The Mashpee Wampanoag relationship with the United States is one of political equality, derived from their inherent sovereignty, powers, and authority that long predates the United States. No federal agency or civil servant has the authority to diminish or in any way undermine that unique political relationship and standing. We will remain vigilant and stand united with Mashpee who have shaped and supported this country from the arrival of the first European settlers and will coexist as sovereign equals for generations to come.”
USET SPF and NCAI share a profound commitment to Tribal sovereignty and the restoration of Tribal homelands. In light of this commitment, we have been advocating for a fix to the Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar since it was handed down in 2009. Carcieri has created a deeply inequitable 2-class system, in which some Tribal Nations have the ability to restore their homelands and others do not. This 2-class system serves to deny these Tribal Nations a critical component of the trust relationship, vital aspects of the exercise of inherent sovereignty, and the opportunity to qualify for several government programs.
We continue to call for the immediate passage of a fix that contains the two features necessary to restore parity to the land-into-trust process:
(1) A reaffirmation of the status of current trust lands; and
(2) Confirmation that the Secretary has authority to take land into trust for all federally recognized Tribal Nations.
While this decision is an important step toward righting centuries of wrong against the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, our collective work is not finished. We urge and await a positive determination from DOI on Mashpee’s homelands once and for all. Our organizations will continue to fight for the restoration of Tribal homelands and the full delivery of trust and treaty obligations. We call upon DOI to recommit itself to the restoration of homelands, the trust obligation, and Tribal sovereignty. ”
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About the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe:
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, also known as the People of the First Light, has inhabited present day Massachusetts for more than 12,000 years. After an arduous process lasting more than three decades, the Mashpee Wampanoag were re-acknowledged as a federally recognized tribe in 2007. In 2015, the federal government declared 150 acres of land in Mashpee and 170 acres of land in Taunton as the Tribe’s initial reservation, on which the Tribe can exercise its full tribal sovereignty rights. The Mashpee tribe currently has approximately 2,700 enrolled citizens.
About the National Congress of American Indians:
Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians is the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization in the country. NCAI advocates on behalf of tribal governments and communities, promoting strong tribal-federal government-to-government policies, and promoting a better understanding among the general public regarding American Indian and Alaska Native governments, people and rights. For more information, visit http://www.ncai.org.
About the USET Sovereignty Protection Fund (USET SPF):
Established in 2014, the USET Sovereignty Protection Fund (USET SPF) is a non-profit, inter-Tribal organization advocating on behalf of thirty (30) federally recognized Tribal Nations from the Northeastern Woodlands to the Everglades and across the Gulf of Mexico. USET SPF is dedicated to promoting, protecting, and advancing the inherent sovereign rights and authorities of Tribal Nations and in assisting its membership in dealing effectively with public policy issues.
National Congress of American Indians
Embassy of Tribal Nations
National Congress of American Indians | Embassy of Tribal Nations, 1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 200
Please watch this YouTube made in 2017 about the Tribe holding their government accountable:
Can this Covid 19 contagion around the world help call a halt to exploiting those who find themselves in poverty and rethink raising them out of their desperate lifestyles?
And when elections happen, peaceful demonstrators are arrested.
“During the coronavirus lockdown, everything was shut down, so the Israelis used this as a time for them to steal more land from Palestinians, because there was nothing people could do about it,” Abu Sneineh said.
According to Jaber, “one of the most effective tools that we have used as peaceful activists to maintain our presence in the city is by organising prayers at the Ibrahimi mosque,” referring to a weeks-long campaign pre-Covid-19 that drew thousands of worshippers for morning prayers.
Now, the soldiers only let in a few dozen worshippers at a time, Jaber said, “under the guise of health concerns because of the coronavirus”.
“We know that they don’t care about our health, because they kill us everywhere we go,” he said. “They just use this as an excuse to not let people in, and take more control.”
An enlightening newspaper story from 2010:
“Levy’s father really was running for his life: it was Palestine, or a concentration camp. Yet Levy says that the analogy is imperfect – because now the jumping man is still, sixty years later, smashing the head of the man he landed on against the ground, and beating up his children and grandchildren too. “1948 is still here. 1948 is still in the refugee camps. 1948 is still calling for a solution,” he says. “Israel is doing the very same thing now… dehumanising the Palestinians where it can, and ethnic cleansing wherever it’s possible. 1948 is not over. Not by a long way.”
Revelation 6:7-8 tells us this about the fourth seal: “When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and see.’ So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him.”
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary says this about the color of the fourth horse: “ ‘Pale’ (chloros) denotes a yellowish green, the light green of a plant, or the paleness of a sick person in contrast to a healthy appearance.” Put bluntly, this horse is the color of death.
The Old Testament Revelations has triggered many an imaginative mind to take it to mean whatever the reader wants it to mean. Artists have created wonderful interpretations of what the vile horsemen might look like, such as this one:
Where this blog is concerned, I am using the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse as the closest tale which has been told for thousands of years to express how I think those victims of the invaders from Europe must have felt when they encountered them.
As the explorers, sailors, conquistadores, Friars and their host of animals, stepped off their ships onto land, not only did they look frightening but they also carried unseen threats. These were diseases to which the Europeans were accustomed over centuries. One of these was Smallpox. The earliest evidence of small pox disease dates to the 3rd century BCE in Egyptian mummies. Nobody knows its origin.
The disease historically occurred in outbreaks. The initial symptoms of the disease included fever and vomiting. This was followed by formation of sores in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days the skin rash turned into characteristic fluid-filled bumps with a dent in the center. The bumps then scabbed over and fell off, leaving scars. The disease was spread between people or via contaminated objects. Millions have died from smallpox and only in recent times has a successful vaccine become available to protect some of the people in the world from it.
Image of victim of smallpox
As more Europeans moved into the Americas, more natives grew sick and died. The Europeans would recognise the illness, the natives would be overwhelmed by its horrific symptoms.
They had no resistance to these foreign diseases. Millions of indigenous peoples across the Americas were extinguished so suddenly due to violence, disease, slavery and exploitation.
The consequent lack of slave labour created a need to continue the exploitation of resources by the new ‘owners’.
Spain’s monarchs had broadly granted colonists dominion over Amerindian subjects, compelling native populations to pay tribute, often in the form of labor. The latter practice was largely an extension of the medieval encomienda, a quasi-feudal system in which Iberian Christians who had performed valuable military service were granted authority to govern people and resources in lands conquered from Iberian Muslims. Also, despite their objection to a trans-Atlantic slave trade of Amerindians, the Crown permitted their outright enslavement and sale within the Americas. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Spanish colonists conducted raids throughout the Caribbean, bringing captives from Central America, northern South America, and Florida back to Hispaniola and other Spanish settlements. Two of the principal arguments used to justify the enslavement of Amerindians were the concepts of “just war” (i.e. the notion that anyone who refused to accept Christianity, or rebelled against Spanish rule, could be enslaved), and “rescate” or ransom (the idea that Amerindians held captive by other groups could be purchased in order to Christianize them, and to rescue them from captors who were allegedly cannibals).
Thus the slave trade began, and imported slaves from Spanish territories began to arrive by the boat load to replace the millions of Amerindians who had perished. They came from West Africa or Spanish colonies such as the Philippines.
From 1492 through the the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th century the Spanish Empire expanded built on the wealth and power gained from exploiting the New World. Queen Isabella pushed this moment in history into a lasting legacy. The crown’s main source of wealth was from gold and silver mined in Mexico and Peru. The empire reached the peak of its military, political and economic power under the Spanish Habsburgs, through most of the 16th and 17th centuries, and its greatest territorial extent under the House of Bourbon in the 18th century.
The intermingling of slaves stolen from their homelands to work for colonialists on land they secured under a legal framework created by the Spanish monarchy, set up generations of genetic mixtures which are difficult to disentangle today. Nevertheless, work continues on that task.
Andreas Morenos research in 2013 has studied genetic influences linked to medical aspects. For example, he and his team found:
“Caribbean populations have a higher proportion of African ancestry compared to mainland American populations, a result of admixture during and after the Atlantic slave trade. Surprisingly, the authors found that all samples tightly clustered with present day Yoruba samples from Nigeria rather than being dispersed throughout West Africa. However, because other analyses suggested that there might have been two major waves of migration from West Africa, the authors decided to analyze “old” and “young” blocks of African ancestry separately. This analysis revealed that “older” segments are primarily derived from groups from the Senegambia region of Northwest Africa, while “younger” segments likely trace to groups from the Gulf of Guinea and Equatorial West Africa (including the Yoruba).”
Citation: Moreno-Estrada A, Gravel S, Zakharia F, McCauley JL, Byrnes JK, et al. (2013) Reconstructing the Population Genetic History of the Caribbean. PLoS Genet 9(11): e1003925. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003925
Paper author Andres Moreno-Estrada is a research associate in the lab of Carlos Bustamante.
The consequences of the Spanish invasion, and ensuing other European land grabs, has been so immense, it is hard for us to grasp looking back through biased historical documents.
It is my belief that this exemplifies the prophesy of the Revelations and that we, as humans, could have taken a different path than the one pursued since 1492. But our mental illness through religious fervour leading to warring tendencies, our land grab greed, our pursuit of power and criminal acts against fellow humans over the previous centuries all culminated to that point in history to ensure this catastrophe would occur. It was the perfect storm.
borderslynn 
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