High River Alberta and the Covid

[unclebilly]

I live not far from High River. This small town of 13,000 is primarily an agricultural town with a fair amount of retirees. It is also a popular place for movie and TV productions to be filmed at.

High River is also home to a huge meat packing plant and over the past week the covid 19 count in town has gone from 2 cased to 207 cases, mostly thanks to the ~2000 employees at Cargill, the aforementioned meat packing plant.

This is very bad for several reasons.

1. Many workers from Calgary commute to High River to work at Cargill. There are 360 cases directly related to that Cargill plant in / around Alberta.

2. Many spouses or house mates of the Cargill workers work in health care, typically at nursing homes and people are dying in nursing homes from indirect contact with workers infected at Cargill.

3. The packing plant workers are typically not well paid and often live in homes where 12 - 20 others living in a house is a common occurrence.

4. On Monday at 5:00 PM, Cargill started turning away cattle. Some of these cows travelled 1000 miles or more to be slaughtered and taking the, back home was not an option. Many were taken to the Tuesday livestock auction sale in Fort MacLeod where they sold for 1/4 - 1/3rd market value. This has crashed the western Canadian cattle market at least for now. To put thing into perspective, this one plant typically slaughters 5000 head / day. Other large beef processors are also working at lower capacity.

High River, with 207 cases has double the infection rate per capital that New York City has. It is not good. We will be going elsewhere for farm supplies until this dies down.

[Sooner or later]

Sorry to hear.

Once it gets it's foot in the door it is damn hard to control. Best of luck. Be safe!

[911boost]

This is the second meat packing plant I have read of where this is a problem, a plant in SD is the other.

I wonder if it is the atmosphere or working conditions in the plant that is causing the rapid spread.

[wdfifteen]

Something similar happened in South Dakota. Close working conditions and a laissez-faire attitude on the part of the government and plant managers contributed.
In Ohio our essential industries are open but highly regulated and monitored for testing and detection of ill workers. Our governor has taken this seriously since day one.

[vash]

Best of luck to that town.

[aigel]

Sounds like these factories have poor leadership. By now everyone should understand that distancing workers, splitting shifts, more PPE, more cleaning etc. needs to happen to avoid an outbreak and a factory shutdown. An ounce of prevention ... yes, they would have less output, more cost, but they would still operate if they would have been a bit less greedy IMHO.

I have contact with guys in the boonies through my hobby. A lot of them thought nothing will ever show up in their area. It is a small world these days ...

G

[unclebilly]

I think the work conditions may be tight but the living conditions outside of work likely contributed to this scenario more. I recall 15 years ago selling a Toyota Tercel to 4 guys who commuted to the Cargill plant from NE Calgary. There is no way that 4 men could socially distance themselves while carpooling 80 miles each way in a Tercel...

[aigel]

I see what you are saying about commuting and living conditions. Here in CA, some jurisdictions shut down all gardening / landscaping operations because those guys do the same - drive in from two counties over in each others laps. I see it all the time. Once they are out of the truck and working on the yard, that is a lot less of an issue.

G

[LWJ]

That is awful. Sounds like the "perfect" recipe for disaster.

Tell me more about what is happening in the beef market? This could be the start of a much larger chain reaction.

[unclebilly]

The bad part about the beef situation is that farmers will get paid less for their cattle because ‘surplus’. Consumers will pay more at the stores for beef because ‘shortage’.

[911boost]

Right now it is not happening at enough places to cause an overreaching change in beef price to the consumer, but I agree with Billy.

[Ayles]

Don’t tell the folks in Parf... they won’t believe you. Now get those guys to pick up their bone saws and get back to work!

[unclebilly]

It’s now up to 246 cases...