More than 680 cheap workers from Eastern Europe got infected because they work and live on assembly lines and in collective accommodation in the smallest of spaces.
Updated 3 hours ago—
Under suspicion: Various works by the German slaughter giant Westfleisch have emerged as acute epidemic herds.
Photo: Keystone
On Thursday, the responsible health authority declined to close the store immediately, as the meat factory was “systemically important”. It was closed on Friday until at least May 17. Westfleisch, one of the three largest meat processors in Germany, had already developed into one of the most acute herds of epidemics in the country.
In Coesfeld in North Rhine-Westphalia alone, where Westfleisch slaughters and cuts up almost 3 million pigs a year, 254 out of 1200 employees have been infected according to extensive tests. There are additional cases in the neighboring Oer-Erkenschwick plant.
The district turned into a risk area
Coesfeld became known throughout Germany because the new infections hit the entire district in one fell swoop in a risk area transformed. While restaurants and shops were opening again in North Rhine-Westphalia, they now have to remain closed in Coesfeld for a week longer.
Westfleisch is not an isolated case. In Bad Bramstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, a slaughterhouse reported 128 infected people. In Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg, there were 300 Covid-19 cases in a meat factory ten days ago – the plant has remained in operation to this day. A total of at least 680 meat workers have been reported as infected since the beginning of May.
–In Coesfeld in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Westfleisch slaughtered and cut up almost 3 million pigs a year, 254 out of 1200 employees were infected.
EPA
North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein announced that they would now systematically check all slaughterhouses and test their employees. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone there are 35 meat factories and dozens of other processing companies with 20,000 employees. As a precaution, the Ministry of Agriculture in Berlin said that eating meat from contaminated farms was completely harmless.
Why slaughterhouses in particular?
The question of why meat factories prove to be a particularly favorable biotope for viruses leads right into the middle of a notoriously underexposed environment. And to a business model that many observers call straightforward exploitation. Companies like Westfleisch slaughter almost only cheap Eastern European workers, especially Romanians, but also Bulgarians and Poles. They are not employed at the factory, but as temporary workers at a subcontractor. They earn around 1200 to 1500 euros a month.
They not only stand side by side in the brutal work on the assembly line, but usually also live together in collective accommodation in a confined space, not infrequently three to six workers in one room. Since they have not been tested for a long time and mostly work without masks, the virus was able to spread freely among them.
Unions and activists have long protested against this “modern slavery”.
Unions and activists such as the Catholic social pastor Peter Kossen have long protested against this “modern slavery”. The Romanians are treated like “disposable people” who can be worn out and exchanged at will, says Kossen. Their protection also suffered, trade unionists say, because checks on working conditions have steadily declined over the past ten years. Some companies would only be checked every 25 years.
The meat industry, in turn, warns against the general suspicion of an entire industry. It is not the working conditions that are to blame for the outbreaks, but the fact that work should not be interrupted due to concerns about safe supplies. Tougher conditions for the industry would only result in many companies no longer being competitive, going bankrupt or going abroad.
Even in the United States
German meat factories and wholesalers have long been waging a ruinous price war, which is mainly fought on the backs of animals and workers – despite all honorable beliefs. And consumers like to get used to grotesquely cheap meat.
In the United States, meat factories have also emerged as centers of the pandemic in recent weeks. According to a research by “USA Today”, 10,000 cases of infection have already been reported; 45 Covid-19 patients have died. Above all, immigrants from Latin America work in the slaughterhouses there. In some factories, more than half of the workforce was found to be infected after testing. Some factories were closed after the outbreaks, but were soon reopened as “systemically important” at the behest of President Donald Trump.
Posted at 17:42 today-
