Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
‘The workers are being sacrificed’
FERN and Mother Jones
As workers in America’s meatpacking plants face high rates of Covid-19, the industry has displayed a chilling disregard for their safety, according to a FERN investigation by Esther Honig and Ted Genoways, published with Mother Jones. Based on extensive interviews with workers, they report that JBS, a meat company with $50 billion in sales, pressured workers at its beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, to show up for work even after they were exposed to the virus; failed to provide workers personal protective equipment until well into the pandemic; and stopped testing workers for Covid-19 when numbers soared, according to worker advocates.
Chef Tom Colicchio on the challenges of reopening restaurants
The New Yorker
“For me, it’s about safety. I’m looking at various plans, and I just don’t know how it’s going to go. Someone walks into your restaurant and they touch the door handle—do you have to go right behind them and disinfect it?” Colicchio says in a wide-ranging Q&A with Helen Rosner. “Waiters with masks on, bartenders with masks on. Customers are going to have to have masks on, and what are they going to do? Lift it to eat their food and drink their drinks? There’s so many questions to ask. Clearly, we’re going to have to take at least half of our seats out of the restaurant. That doesn’t work for revenue.”
A farmer tries to make sense of his need to destroy crops while people go hungry
The Washington Post
With his processors shuttered by the coronavirus, Hank Scott, a Florida cucumber farmer, invited volunteers from a Christian hunger relief organization to pick as much produce as they could and donate it to nearby food banks. “Anything green they left behind will likely be plowed back into the ground, feeding no one and adding to the farm’s ballooning losses,” writes Cleve R. Wootson Jr. “Clark and the volunteer cucumber pickers were trying to bring some sense to what has emerged as one of the most perverse outcomes of the pandemic: farmers forced to destroy fields full of crops while a growing number of families can’t afford enough food.”
A man, his Costco card and a ship are feeding this Alaska town during pandemic
The Hustle
Like many of America’s rural and remote towns, Gustavus has an arduous supply chain. Even in good times, getting groceries to an isolated enclave in Southeastern Alaska requires some serious logistical wrangling. But when the town’s usual transport methods were disrupted, its 446 residents found themselves in the midst of a pandemic with diminished access to affordable food. And one man — the town grocer — decided to take matters into his own hands.
For many, pandemic cooking is more about stress relief than survival
The Atlantic
Unlike crises past, the trending food activities of the Covid-19 pandemic are more about comfort and control than about dealing with actual shortages, writes Shirley Li. “Cooking is serving as therapy. Quarantine recipe exchanges in the form of chain emails are flooding people’s inboxes as friends crave connection. These trends resemble little of the inventions from crises past: New recipes aren’t merely cheaper or more accessible substitutes for unavailable foods—they’re activities that help give cooks a sense of control and security during an uncontrollable time.”