FERN’s Friday Feed: Will U.S. citizens replace migrants on the meatpacking line? Um, no.
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Why Trump’s deportation plan could actually increase migrant labor
FERN and Politico Magazine
“If the Trump administration follows through on its most ambitious mass deportation plans, who exactly will replace these essential workers? According to several high-ranking members of Trump’s incoming administration, Americans will. In an interview with The New York Times last year, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller claimed that the jobs held by deported workers would be filled by U.S. citizens, ‘who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.’ … The opposite is likely to happen,” write Teresa Cotsirilos and Ted Genoways. “Labor organizers, public interest attorneys and labor economists we have interviewed believe that rather than improving the quality of food industry jobs to attract more American-born workers, employers will continue hiring low-wage immigrants. And the real development that we expect? The Trump administration will provide food industry employers with low-wage immigrant workers by expanding the existing H-2 visa program.”
The threat of deportation is already hitting restaurant workers
Eater
“It’s an open secret that the restaurant industry in particular runs on the backs of workers without legal status. There are close to 700,000 undocumented immigrants in New York, according to a 2022 study from the Center for Migration Studies — and that does not account for the over 200,000 migrants who have come to the city since then in what’s now called a ‘migrant crisis,’” writes Melissa McCart. “Nationwide, according to a study from CMS released in 2024, as many as 8.3 million undocumented immigrants work in the U.S. economy, representing 5.2 percent of the workforce. Of those, around a million people or more work in restaurants.”
How worried should you be about bird flu?
The Atlantic
“Over the past several months, bird-flu numbers have been steadily ticking up, especially among farmworkers who interact closely with cows,” writes Lora Kelley. “I spoke with my colleague Katherine J. Wu, who reports on science, about her level of concern right now, and the government’s response to the spread of the virus so far.”
Will the U.S. ever embrace insect cuisine?
Grist
“Insects are already a food source for some 2 billion people all over the world, and have been for millennia. The fact that most people in Western countries don’t eat them today (and are generally repulsed by them) may have something to do with the fact that we live farther from the tropics — in colder regions, insects are smaller and less a part of daily life. The built environment that keeps us safe from the cold also keeps bugs out, contributing to this idea that we don’t want creepy-crawly things near us,” writes Claire Elise Thompson. “But understanding how the history feeds into our perceptions today might be part of the key to changing attitudes. Because although disgust might feel very visceral, it can be reprogrammed. As anthropologist Julie Lesnik told Grist in May, ‘Disgust is one of the few learned emotions. So we are disgusted by the things our culture tells us to be disgusted by.’”
How Biden reshaped food and farming
Civil Eats
“Over the past four years, the Biden administration’s priorities have centered on spending billions of dollars on food and farm infrastructure, paying farmers to implement climate-smart practices, finalizing new regulations related to the environment, labor, food safety, and nutrition, and distributing more dollars to food insecure families,” writes Lisa Held. “It will be many years before the ultimate impacts—good, bad, or neutral—of the Biden administration’s many investments and regulatory changes become clear. To maintain a record as we head into the second Trump administration, we’ve produced an accounting of Biden’s most significant actions impacting food and farming during his tenure.”