We Made Trump and COVID Pandemic Possible

By JIM VAN DER POL

Trump fired his early warning system by shorting the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of funds, causing them to pull back on their international presence, including in China. Consequently he heard of the dangerous virus later than he should have, perhaps in mid January. There were three things he needed absolutely to do at that point. He needed to nationalize any company that had potential to develop a vaccine, putting it under the control of the CDC for the duration. He needed to find and nationalize any company that had the potential to make masks, personal protective gear and to develop test kits and the laboratory capability to analyze those tests. And he needed to get underway the hiring of thousands of public health workers to administer tests, get them read and trace the movements of anyone testing positive. He failed miserably on all three of these tasks. He is useless.

He is our creation you know. He is the wunderkind of some we have seen in the high school sports world who babied and kept bailing out their sons until they sent them off to a prestigious college with an athletic scholarship only to get a call from the dean that boy wonder was up on charges. And when Dad shows up with money and lawyers he may begin to get the idea that he will spend the rest of his life straightening the road under his hopeless son and all because he did not stand back for consequences to impose their lessons upon him. And that is what our legal and enforcement machinery did with Trump. He is only doing what we have taught him he could always get away with.

Now he nationalizes and reopens a slaughterhouse in Worthington, Minn. Another excuse for him to run his mouth. US Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), that regular apologist and booster of agricultural business as usual is embarrassed. He blusters about never getting caught with our pants down again. I almost sympathize. He knows, we all know, that personal protections for the workers is a Trumpian sham. We know as well as he does, that the tests are not available to test the entire work crew for Covid 19. Health care workers cannot even get tests. The charade continues.

Getting rid of Trump is not the end goal. We must change the circumstances that make a Trump possible. And there I have a suggestion for a small start. I urge Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Peterson and Congressman Collin Peterson and the others around this agriculture issue to start to put into place a system that will go some distance toward changing the circumstance. We need slaughterhouses, several good, new up-to-date buildings strategically placed throughout the state to serve the growing number of farm meat marketing businesses. These must feature animal handling along the humane lines suggested by Temple Grandin, the livestock whisperer. They must be of a size and quality to compare favorably with big meat. They must be, as much as possible, pleasant places to work and safe workplaces above all else. Pay must be adequate.

The several plants that slaughter hogs should be capable of perhaps 500 to 1,000 head per week. Line speeds, if lines are used, must be under strict state control. They should feature some in-house further processing, but they need to have slaughter capacity in excess of their processing for processing should be encouraged to take place separately from slaughter at scattered places about in rural Minnesota. Care must be taken to supplement, not replace, current private capacity. But our small processing capacity is getting old and shutting down. State officials could visit the facilities operated by the Lorenz brothers in Cannon Falls, Minn., to see a good example of what could happen. These state-owned abbatoirs could be built with bonding funds. It is state economic development.

The state should build and retain ownership of these abbatoirs. The meat processor associations can run apprentice programs in them that should encourage those who desire to and are able to operate processing to come forward. The facilities could be leased to operators. The state’s retaining ownership could guarantee that certain standards of humane slaughter and good work conditions are maintained as a minimum.

This would:

• enable badly needed access to quality processing for farmer marketers

• Build business-based prosperity in central and western Minnesota.

• Allow for a much wider variety of farms, increasing numbers of viable farms, especially small farms.

• Encourage farms that want to market directly or through relationships to people in the rural area and the urban areas.

• Increase urban understanding of rural issues, and rural understanding of urban issues by highlighting the communication skills that go with closely held marketing businesses.

• Diversify agriculture and farming, potentially increasing the possibility of better care of the Earth

• Encourage development of small processing businesses, holding out the possibility of “family heirloom” sausage recipes that people would drive out from the cities to buy

• Stabilize and support rural schools

• Stabilize and support main street businesses

Currently we have food supply controlled through giant companies that are increasingly crippled by the pandemic. We must not reconcile ourselves to one meat plant or one cannery or one fresh vegetable warehouse system controlling so much as five percent of the product flow which is the situation we have with the shutdown of Smithfield’s pork plant in Sioux Falls. It is dangerous. We really don’t yet know how dangerous.

The best way to come out in a different place is to make a different first step, a step for people, communities and hogs. The time is now. I urge action.

Jim Van Der Pol farms near Kerkhoven, Minn. A collection of his columns, “Conversations with the Land,” was published by No Bull Press (nobullpressonline.com).

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2020

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