The horrible working conditions of the workers in meat industries have been known for a long time, but so far the owners refuse to change anything. If you haven't heard about it yet, here's a good way to start for the US: Last Week Tonight, here for Europe: ZDF Magazine Royale
It's usually desperate migrant workers working long shifts in cold conditions, including heavy lifting, handling very sharp knifes, and often working more than 10 hours. Workplace injuries are off the charts.
They often live in shared apartments with several beds in one room that they have to rent for obscenely high prices from their employer, who rarely is the large meat company but rather a small sub-subcontractor. This way the large corporation can cheat on minimum wages and is not liable for most workplace injuries.
In Germany they started to pick up Ukraine refugees under the condition they work for them, because the conditions are so bad they're always looking for even more desperate workers.
So far all attempts to improve the working conditions have failed, and maybe it is time to reduce those peoples workload consumerside. Yes, as hard as that sounds: Eat less meat! There are, however, some side effects:
30% of the worlds wheat comes from Ukraine and Russia. But the war destroys Ukraine agriculture, and Russia wants to reserve its crop for their own population first.
Almost half of Africas wheat comes from those two countries.
In addition to that it is estimated that climate change will reduce the African yield by up to 20%. They expect a major hunger crisis.
But there is still no shortage of wheat, more than 60% of wheat (and corn) is not actually eaten by humans, but used in industrial meat production. If we all can reduce our meat consumption to once every week or less this famine in poor countries could be averted. (nice side effects: industrial meat production polutes our water reserves by liquid manure dumping, reduces the effectivity of antibiotics (and we're already running out of effective antibiotics), and terrible conditions for the animals.)
Also driving less, slower, and with more foresight, carpooling, WFH, all that reduces oil consumption, slows down global warming, but most importantly, helps the world to stop buying Russian oil and supporting their illegal war.
Remember… “America first!1!” is Donald Trump.
We are:
Debout, les damnés de la terre
Debout, les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passé faisons table rase
Foule esclave, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain.
( Arise, wretched of the earth
Arise, convicts of hunger
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end
Of the past let us wipe the slate clean
Masses, slaves, arise, arise
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all
This is the final struggle
Let us gather together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race )
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