By David Callaway, Callaway Climate Insights
SAN FRANCISCO (Callaway Climate Insights) — Better add a couple steaks, a pot roast and some chicken cutlets to that grocery list of eggs, red wine and toilet paper.
An emerging Covid crisis in U.S. meat packaging plants threatens to disrupt the nation’s meat supply chain, the tens of thousands of jobs that go with it, and open a new front, along with nursing homes, in the war on the coronavirus. My former colleagues at USA Today dramatically unveiled the extent this week in a piece that said more than 2,000 workers in 48 major meat plants have already been infected, setting up dire decisions about risking lives to keep the country fed.
Tysons Foods (TSN) said Wednesday it would close its largest pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa, responsible for almost 20,000 hogs a day, or about 4% of the nation’s pork supply. On Thursday it suspended production at a plant in Washington state.
In terms of climate, though, a meat emergency adds another layer of unexpected schadenfreude to the Covid-19 crisis, where global lockdowns have led to clear skies in major polluted cities and clean water in dirty rivers not seen in 30 years. Livestock accounts for about 14% of global emissions through methane. As with the clean air and water though, these are only temporary impacts until the virus abates.
Indeed, the loss of jobs in this case far outweighs any benefits, and in fact, the lack of processing plants could lead to more livestock methane amid supply backlogs.
Which leads to our favorite story of the week, this piece by Bloomberg’s Agnieszka de Sousa and Akshat Rathi on a British company called Zelp, which has developed methane-capturing masks for burping cows. Another triumph of human ingenuity over climate disaster.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks