The Structural Invisibility of Outsiders: The Role of Migrant Labour in the Meat-Processing Industry

Understanding the roles of economy and society in the relative risks of zoonosis emergence from livestock

The emergence of zoonotic infections that can develop into pathogens of pandemic potential is a major concern for public health. The risks of emergence and transmission relate to multiple factors that range from land use to human-non-human animal contacts. Livestock agriculture plays a potentially significant role in those risks, shaping landscapes and providing hosts that can act as the source or amplifiers of emergent pathogens. The relative risks will be contingent upon the nature of those systems, with comparisons often made between intensive, indoor, biosecure systems and more extensive, outdoor, insecure systems. Microbiological, ecological and veterinary sciences provide useful entry points in specifying and modelling some of the relative risks. Yet, they often do so with little regard for social science inputs and by making assumptions about social and economic conditions. In this article, we respond to recent analyses of relative risks by raising the importance of social and economic drivers of risk. We chart social science insights and research that materially alter the zoonotic risks associated with livestock production. Our purpose is to emphasize the requirement for full appreciation of the social, economic and political components of zoonotic and pandemic risk.

The role of union health and safety representatives during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A case study of the UK food processing, distribution, and retail sectors

This article highlights the weakness of the UK's occupational health and safety infrastructure exposed by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Utilising a political economy perspective, it captures the critical role of workplace union safety representatives in mitigating risk and contesting the expropriation of health and recommodification of labour, specifically inadequate sick pay.

Health Equity and a Paradigm Shift in Occupational Safety and Health

Despite significant improvements in occupational safety and health (OSH) over the past 50 years, there remain persistent inequities in the burden of injuries and illnesses. In this commentary, the authors assert that addressing these inequities, along with challenges associated with the fundamental reorganization of work, will require a more holistic approach that accounts for the social contexts within which occupational injuries and illnesses occur. A biopsychosocial approach explores the dynamic, multidirectional interactions between biological phenomena, psychological factors, and social contexts, and can be a tool for both deeper understanding of the social determinants of health and advancing health equity. This commentary suggests that reducing inequities will require OSH to adopt the biopsychosocial paradigm. Practices in at least three key areas will need to adopt this shift. Research that explicitly examines occupational health inequities should do more to elucidate the effects of social arrangements and the interaction of work with other social determinants on work-related risks, exposures, and outcomes. OSH studies regardless of focus should incorporate inclusive methods for recruitment, data collection, and analysis to reflect societal diversity and account for differing experiences of social conditions. OSH researchers should work across disciplines to integrate work into the broader health equity research agenda.

Migration outside large cities: a comparison of the hiring of migrants for the food processing industry in the United States and Japan

Recent studies suggest that the hiring of migrants in the food processing industry has increased the migrant population outside large cities among affluent migrant-receiving countries. This study examines how the U.S. meatpacking industry and the Japanese seafood processing industry, in particular, have developed a dependence on migrants; it does so to identify whether and how a common-thus cross-nationally generalizable-process may account for migration outside large cities. A comparative historical analysis revealed that, with significant national differences between the United States and Japan, including in the legal and institutional contexts of migration, there is little commonality in the processes through which the industries have come to depend on migrants. Yet, there is a similarity in the development of mass production. Such production necessitates an undisrupted availability of full-time as well as low-wage workforce, and migrants on both sides of the Pacific are employed to ensure this availability. Thus, while urban-centered migration studies often emphasize the growth of low-wage services or small-batch manufacturing as an economic driver of migration, this study argues that, outside large cities, a different pattern of industrial transformation is associated with labor migration.

COVID-19 Effects on Livestock Production: A One Welfare Issue

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights that we exist in a global community. From a single city, it spread to 188 countries across the world and infected 30 million people by September 18, 2020. Decades of modeling pandemics predicted potential consequences, but COVID-19's impact on the food supply chain, and specifically livestock production was unexpected. Clusters of cases among workers in meat processing plants evolved quickly to affect human, animal, and environmental welfare in several countries. In processing plants, the hygiene focus is on product quality and food safety. Because of their close proximity to one another, COVID-19 spread rapidly between workers and the lack of sick leave and health insurance likely resulted in workers continuing to work when infectious. In the United States (U.S.) many processing plants shut down when they identified major outbreaks, putting pressure especially on pig and poultry industries. At one point, there was a 45% reduction in pig processing capacity meaning about 250,000 pigs per day were not slaughtered. This resulted in longer transport distances to plants in operation with extra capacity, but also to crowding of animals on farm. Producers were encouraged to slow growth rates, but some had to cull animals on farm in ways that likely included suffering and caused considerable upset to owners and workers. Carcass disposal was also associated with potential biosecurity risks and detrimental effects on the environment. Hence, this is a One Welfare issue, affecting human, animal, and environmental welfare and highlighting the fragility of intensive, high-throughput livestock production systems. This model needs to be re-shaped to include the animal, human, and environmental elements across the farm to fork chain. Such a One Welfare approach will ensure that food production systems are resilient, flexible, and fair in the face of future challenges.