Meat.
Supply chain.
Worker safety.
Politics.
… All in the time of Covid-19.
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Bon Temps will close permanently, sad.
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That is sad. I really enjoyed his interview with Andrew Friedman.
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““Making money is down the list of priorities,” he said. “Right now, it’s getting people back to work, and doing this right so there’s not a setback. Most people in the hospitality business won’t survive a second round of this.””
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The farmer borrows $1 million to grow 300 acres of a variety of potatoes used exclusively to make frozen french fries for fast-food chains such as McDonald’s. When harvest is done, after he pays off the loan he nets $60,000. If the business isn’t insured against all potential crop or market losses, that seems like a very fragile business model doomed to fail eventually.
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A look at farmers markets across the US
Of the 7,324 cases of Covid-19 this study was based on, only one was caught outdoors.
Interesting read about the breakdowns in the food supply chains in CA and how people/organizations are working to adapt:
"Sinclair aimed in “The Jungle” to tell the story not so much of the meatpacking industry but more generally of the immigrant experience in Chicago’s lower depths.
As it happens, meat and poultry factories are still heavily served by immigrant labor. “The parallels are really striking,” Michaels told me. “Immigrants are looked down upon as less important and not like good Americans.”
Smithfield spokespersons and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has refused to issue stay-at-home orders in her state, tried to blame the Sioux Falls outbreak on immigrant lifestyles.
“A lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the same community, the same buildings, sometimes in the same apartments,” Noem told Fox News.
“The Jungle’s” reception, as it turned out, proved Sinclair’s point that members of the immigrant community were invisible men and women.
Public outrage focused more on whether the meatpacking plants’ products were healthful and clean than on the inhumane conditions in the plants. The reforms prompted by the book concerned the former, not the latter. In a famous lament, Sinclair observed, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”"
(A personal aside: I read “The Jungle” in my early teens, after conflating Sinclair Lewis with Upton Sinclair - this mistake had a lasting impact on my food choices.)
I read this and winced … I understand, in many ways, the desire to be out, to reengage and find some semblance of one’s former routines and comforts, but this is just … ugh.
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What happens to cities, or neighborhoods, which had been revitalized by restaurants, when those restaurants are shuttered?
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When it comes to masks and social distancing, who’s stuck enforcing the rules?
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Not so much about food, but community:
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