With shuttered slaughterhouses, meat shortages and infected or dying workers in North America as front-page news, powerful global investors are calling on large meat producing corporations to reduce the major risks in their operations or face becoming stranded in the wake of the pandemic.
The $20 trillion FAIRR investor network www.fairr.org warns that big food companies must address two major types of risk in their factory farm/slaughterhouse systems. The first is major climate, environmental, food security and worker safety issues. The second is that the failure to adequately address these issues could lead the system to become the source of the next pandemic.
“The large, closed, confined spaces of factory farms and meat processing facilities are fertile breeding grounds for the emergence of zoonotic diseases such as coronaviruses – affecting both animals and food system workers,” said Jeremy Coller, founder of the FAIRR investor network and Chief Investment Officer at Coller Capital.
Coller explains that instead of taking this opportunity to tackle the problem at its source, and foster change in the animal agriculture sector, government financial support and industry decisions are merely offering “a band-aid” for the food supply chain.
“It is a sugar rush for an industry that asset managers are increasingly seeing as stranded in the wake of COVID-19,” Coller said.
The pandemic has laid bare the existing vulnerabilities in the current system and investors are concerned the pressures of the pandemic threaten to make these businesses unsustainable in the long term.
Slaughterhouses are a major choke point in the supply chain. In Canada and the US, more than 6,500 slaughterhouse workers have Covid-19 and 21 have died as of May 1st according to the CDC and Canadian health authorities. Covid-19 has also infected workers at meat packing plants in Australia, Ireland, Spain and Brazil. This has led to the temporary shutdown of processing facilities and the killing of millions of animals that cannot be sent to market.
Concentration of production in a few meatpacking facilities is now shown to be a high-risk strategy. Fifty meat packing plants slaughter and process 98 percent of US beef, and 90 percent of US pork is produced by plants that slaughter more than one million pigs per year, according to The New York Times. In Canada, three slaughterhouses provide 95 percent of Canadian beef.
Some fast food restaurants in the US have temporarily run out of hamburgers and others in Canada are importing beef instead of buying animals raised by Canadian farmers. And consumers are seeing reduced choice or limits on meat purchases at supermarkets. But, while these disruptions are being described as a threat to the food supply, Coller says, “Let’s be clear — a meat shortage does not equal a food shortage.”
Investors, led by FAIRR, have already put the North American meat sector under severe pressure due to its unsustainable water, land and climate footprint. Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 14.5% of global GHG emissions, larger than all transportation combined, according to the UN FAO.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur, We Animals Media.
Global investors have also been pressing the industry to act on its failure to reduce the use of antibiotics in factory farms and slaughterhouses as this also has the potential to spawn the next major pandemic.
Antibiotic resistance arises from the overuse and abuse of antibiotics in human and animal health systems. Unless addressed, top health experts say antibiotic resistance will lead to “the end of modern medicine” in which ordinary surgeries and common infections like strep throat will become a death sentence. Superbugs stemming from antibiotic resistance already kill 700,000 people globally a year and, if not addressed, is expected to kill 10 million people a year by 2050 according to UN WHO. See our blog https://www.planetfriendlynews.com/blog/the-existential-threat-of-antibiotic-resistance
“The rapid emergence of antibiotic resistance superbugs around the world is widely discussed as the most predictable next pandemic. These problems were already seeing consumers and investors shift away from the sector in historic numbers, with more sustainable options such as plant-based proteins eating away at growth and margins,” Coller said.
The FAIRR coalition says that because industrialized animal agriculture is a prime potential source of future zoonotic pathogens, there is going to be tremendous pressure on the global animal agriculture sector to manage food safety risk in the future. This may include rigorous testing throughout the supply chain, greater transparency, and given the threat of an antibiotic resistance pandemic, greater regulation to stop the routine use of antibiotics.
FAIRR says that antibiotics are not only essential to treating secondary infections associated with this current viral pandemic, but are also critical to any response planning for the next possible bacterial epidemic. Investors are taking action through the Investor Year of Action on AMR (Anti-Microbial Resistance) – a joint initiative between FAIRR, Access to Medicine Index (ATMI), the UN-affiliated Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the UK government.
“One thing is certain—the global protein supply chain needs to move swiftly to respond to these sector-related risks. Over the medium term, its leaders can play an important role by shifting the sector away from a short-sighted dependence on the production and consumption of animals for protein,” said Maria Lettini, Executive Director of the FAIRR Initiative, “Investor Year of Action on AMR.”
As Covid-19 lifts the lid on the black box that is the factory farm/slaughterhouse system, consumers are gaining insight into the origins and consequences of their food choices. Major investors clearly see the risks inherent in these businesses and are using their considerable weight to influence a move to a healthier, safer food system for all.
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