Worksites as Sacrifice Zones: Structural Precarity and COVID-19 in U.S. Meatpacking

As meatpacking facilities became COVID-19 hotspots, the pandemic renewed importance of longstanding claims from environmental justice and agrifood scholars. The former asserts perceived dispensability marginalized populations sustains injustices, whereas latter stresses that decades industrial consolidation created structural instability in food supply chain. This article asks how industry government leverage existing socio-ecological inequalities to ensure continuity chain during COVID-19, implications these actions hold for workers. To answer questions, authors perform case studies three Midwestern states. uses critical framework expand research on sacrifice zones include hazardous worksites such as meatpacking. We find toxic employment flourishes through firms’ labor practices pass risks onto workers name efficiency, a complicit state prioritizes accumulation consumption over workers’ health.