Trump will drive sales of meat & Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Also worker deaths.

Trump today invoked federal law to keep meat-processing facilities open even though plant workers by the hundreds nationwide have been catching the Covid-19 virus on jam-packed production lines.

Hundreds of meat-packing workers in Green Bay have tested positive for Covid-19 and at least one worker reportedly has died.

The number of positive cases tied to a massive Sioux Falls, SD hog-butchering operation now exceeds 1,000, and poultry facilities in Virginia have become Covid-19 hotspots:

Health officials on Virginia's Eastern Shore are increasingly worried that clusters of coronavirus tied to two poultry plants may overwhelm the one local hospital, even as the Trump administration insists such facilities remain open to keep the country fed during the crisis.

Trump says, restart production lines.

A reminder that Upton Sinclair blew the whistle on the meat-packing industry 114 years ago, so here we go again.

To gather information for the novel, Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover working in the meat packing plants of Chicago. These direct experiences exposed the horrific conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Jungle has remained continuously in print since its initial publication.

By the way, Trump had already moved to cut back on in-plant meat inspections. Because, you know, science. 

Pork plants will have their products looked over in less time by fewer inspectors under a rule finalized Tuesday by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

The new rule reduces the number of inspectors required at pork plants and also removes a cap on the speed inspection lines can run, prompting concern from groups that the rule will hurt public health as well as worker safety.

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