Fish processing’s new look/SalmonChile Instagram
As fish processing companies working in Alaska try to come up with plans that will allow for summer operations in the new world of the coronavirus COVID-19, food production facilities across the U.S. and around the globe are already struggling with the pandemic problem.
Things have not been going well.
“TYSON CLOSES IOWA PORK PLANT AMID COVID-19 OUTBREAK,” the Brownfield Ag News reported Monday.
“Sioux Falls meat-packing plant named COVID-19 ‘cluster’,” came the news from South Dakota.
Almost everywhere people are working in close quarters to process large volumes of meat or seafood, COVID-19 infections are popping up.
“The coronavirus pandemic has reached the processing plants where thousands of workers typically stand elbow to elbow to do the low-wage work of cutting, deboning and packing the chicken and beef that Americans savor,” the Times reported. “Some plants have offered financial incentives to keep them on the job, but the virus’s swift spread is causing illness among workers and forcing plants to close.”
Alaska’s problem
Substitute “salmon” for “chicken and beef” in that Times story, and it is an apt description for the workplace that has come to be known as the “slime line” in a state where the coronavirus worry is as much about remote villages as it is about factory workers.
Alaska fish processors, most of them Seattle based, have now presented the state and government officials across Alaska with detailed plans they hope will allow operation of a $600 million to $650 million seasonal industry while keeping COVID-19 out of the small, coastal communities the fishing industry overwhelms in the summer.
Whether those plans will be accepted remains an unknown, though Gov. Mike Dunleavy has recognized commercial fishing as an essential industry.
Other Bristol Bay processors have made similar pledges. Whether the plans are accepted will depend largely on how much risk the state and local economies are willing to accept to maintain the seasonal economies that support largely rural communities.
The risks are hard to quantify.
Iceland – where the government appears close to getting a reliable, random sample of how widespread the coronavirus – is documenting how insidious the disease. Almost 5 percent of the population is now known to have it.
But only about half those people are suffering symptoms that would reveal to them or others that they are carriers of the coronavirus. This generally tracks with the numbers for the people held aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess in early March while Japanese authorities struggled with how to handle the infection.
The differences infection rates between Iceland – 5 percent – and the Glacier Princess – 17 percent – illustrate the value of what has been called “social distancing” just as they underline the risk of phantom carriers.
Some essential business are now daily taking the temperatures of workers to try to detect COVID-19 carriers before they join co-workers, but that system is not foolproof. More than 10 percent of people with the disease have no fever, according to Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.
As evidenced by the difference between the infection rate in Iceland and that on the Diamond Princess, where the infected and many of the infected mingled freely and sometimes closely, social distance clearly helps slow the spread of the disease, but how one social distances in an Alaska fish packing plant is unclear.
Alaska infected
Iceland is a country with a busy airport that welcomes a lot of travelers and tourists from Europe and the U.S. Alaska is a state with a busy airport that sees a lot of travelers and tourists from the Lower 48 states.
Both Europe and the U.S. are now broadly infected with COVID-19, and though the flow of people through Alaska’s largest airport has slowed, it has not stopped. Given all of this, it would appear near certain that the number of people with COVID-19 is higher than the 235 cases – less than half a percent of the Alaska population – the state Department of Health and Social Services is now knows to be infected.
And it is probable there are at 235 people – more or less – wandering around the state with the virus but unaware they are carriers. (Various other studies would put this number at anything from slightly over a dozen to more than 330, but Iceland has what now appears closest to an accurate random sample.)
If 235 people are wandering around Alaska with the disease not knowing they have it, they could carry it almost anywhere. And though the state has banned non-essential travel, people are still moving around because freight needs to be moved, stores need to be supplied, and families wish to reunite.
The state has also imposed a 14-day quarantine upon those moving around, but how well people abide by the quarantine requirements is unclear, and one study indicated that a small percentage – about 1 percent – could still develop the disease after 14 days.
These uncertainties have put a focus on an as-of-yet uninfected area of the 49th state almost the size of Oklahoma, home to only about 7,500 year-round residents and, in the summer, the site of Alaska’s most valuable salmon fishery. This is Bristol Bay, and it has become the focal point for pandemic discussions given the pending, late spring invasion of the estimated 15,000 commercial fishermen and processing plant workers necessary to prosecute the fishing season.
Far less attention has been paid the state’s second-largest fishery in Prince William Sound east of Anchorage, possibly in part because two communities on the Bay are connected by road to Alaska urban centers already infected with the coronavirus.
Other processors have made similar offers of protection for local communities and fish-processing employees around the state. The plans are still under review.
Will they come?
Unknown is whether the processors will be able to find enough workers to fully staff their plants if the state and local governments do go along with the operating plans. Staffing has been a problem in the past.
Even before the pandemic, salmon processors were having trouble finding enough of them, and now some Bay residents and other Alaskans have expressed the view they don’t want nonresidents coming at all.
The issue has divided neighbors in the Bay as it has divided neighbors across the country with some worrying primarily that a friend or loved one might die and others fearing an economic collapse that could mean hardship for everyone.
Some believe any Alaska problems with the coronavirus can be solved by keeping fishermen on their boats and processing workers locked up in what sound a little like internment camps when they are not at work. Others doubt that is possible.
Less attention has been given to who would want the jobs under the lockdown conditions and where these workers might be found.
As a result, the industry has been forced to bring in a lot of foreign workers. International travel is problematic at the moment, and the U.S. food-processing industry is attracting nothing but bad PR.
“How many more have to fight for their life, how many more families got to suffer before they realize we are more important than their production?” 36-year-old Tanisha Isom, a $12.95-per-hour deboner at a Tyson plant told the Times.
“‘Our work conditions are out of control. We literally work shoulder to shoulder daily,’ she said, adding that two people she works closely with are currently fighting for their lives.
“Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods, said the company was taking the temperature of workers before they entered and had implemented social distancing measures, such as installing dividers between workstations and slowing production lines to widen the space between workers on the production floor.”
Buying goodwill
The situation in South America is such that SalmonChile, a salmon industry trade group, has promised to raise $2.4 million to fund efforts to battle the coronavirus.
Most of the workers there are local residents, not seasonal migrants.
The action comes at a time when most Chilean processing plants are running at 50 percent capacity in efforts to increase so-called “social distancing” between workers to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Chilean processors, which handle a steady stream of farmed fish, are in a better position to make such accommodations than Alaska processors, who must deal with a 60-day glut of fish that must be processed quickly to prevent spoilage.
Farmers can keep their salmon finning around in pens until a processing plant is ready to accept them. Commercial fishermen deliver whenever they fill their boat.
It was worth almost $26 million more than the 2018 catch which was so profitable the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis ranked the Bristol Bay Borough the fourth richest county in the country even though much of the value of the salmon catch goes south with nonresident fishermen.
Before the pandemic began, Bay fishermen were looking at another banner year. Now no one knows what could happen.
It is possible, depending on how the still developing pandemic unfolds in Alaska, that the fishery will be closed. It would appear more likely that processors – which were having their own problems before the pandemic began – operate at something less than full capacity.
That in and of itself could significantly reduce the harvest. Processors aren’t going to buy more fish than they can process. They have in the past imposed their own limits on fishermen.
Meanwhile, prices for sockeye salmon – the Bay’s money fish – are expected to be lower for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact processors bought too many sockeye at too high a price last year and were paying to store a lot of them in freezers until pandemic fear fueled a run on foods of all sorts. Hoarding subsequently emptied supermarkets of many edibles.
Pandemfear helped U.S. seafood sales set a record for the week ending March 14.
Now, however, salon markets are in chaos. When the pandemic forced closure of restaurants to reduce close contact between Americans, salmon farmers – who produce about 75 percent of the salmon eaten in the world today – began moving more of their product into retail operations where the fish compete with frozen Alaska wild salmon.
Meanwhile, supply chains to China – where a lot of Alaska salmon is now shipped after being headed and gutted in a state – were disrupted, and the fishing industry remains burdened with tariffs that were part of a heated U.S.-China trade war before the arrival of COVID-19 literally took over the news.
Only months ago, the trade war seemed the biggest problem for the Alaska fishing industry, and now it seems the least of the worries.
Categories: News
Ok, Steve S. Check this out..Very, very interesting and might address some of your conspiracy theories. Craig, might ne the story of the year..
Tell me what you think?
https://youtu.be/AJjaQJTBTGU
I am sticking to the purposeful Chinese release to kill off the aging and weak and destroy world economies and leave ripe for the picking. Win-win all around for the Chinese.. Pretty bravo actually. But, interesting nut job.
Bryan,
You don’t even need to make this stuff up, here is a video of Dr. Fauci in 2017 predicting a “surprise outbreak” during the Trump administration?
Talk about wild predictions!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2Ftcv6u3w
Here’s an interesting article on a recent random study in Germany where 15% of the population is believed to have covid antibodies, meaning they’ve already had covid. https://spectator.us/covid-antibody-test-german-town-shows-15-percent-infection-rate/
Right here in the good ole USA:
“A phlebotomist working at a Chicago hospital said Thursday that 30 to 50 percent of those tested for coronavirus have antibodies, and 10 to 20 percent of those tested are actual carriers of the virus.
Sumaya Owaynat, a phlebotomy technician for Rosewood Community Hospital, has had extensive experience with coronavirus testing over the last few weeks, as she has been testing around 400 to 600 people per day in the hospital’s parking lot. Owaynat also stated that there is a far greater number of those that have come through her line and have already recovered from the virus compared to those who currently have the disease.
“A lot of people have high antibodies, which means they had the coronavirus but they don’t have it anymore and their bodies built the antibodies,” Owaynat told Chicago City Wire.
Antibodies in the bloodstream reveal that a person has already had the coronavirus and may be immune to contracting the virus again.
If accurate, this means the spread of the virus may have been underway in the Roseland community – and the state and country as a whole – prior to the issuance of stay at home orders and widespread business closures in mid-March which have crippled the national economy.
In addition, those who show signs of already having had the illness should be able to re-enter society — albeit with some modified social distancing measures in place — rather than sheltering at home as they are no longer in danger.”
Steve O,
Here is a scientific study that shows the virus was probably around in society much earlier than previously reported.
“Estimates of the timing of the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 made with current sequence data point to emergence of the virus in late November 2019 to early December 2019.
… Hence, this scenario presumes a period of unrecognized transmission in humans between the initial zoonotic event and the acquisition of the polybasic cleavage site.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
“Nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts”.
This whole “self isolate” started because “we couldnt afford to flood the hospitals and our healthcare system”. Well, that jasn’t happened yet. So much so ABC “News” was airing footage of the Northern Region of Italy and claimed it was NYC. The liars did it not once, but twice..
The Demkcrats cant afford to let this once in a lifetime crisis go to waste.
B.Bay doesn’t go until June. There will be some changes in corridor-19 before then, either way. Cannery workers will be the easiest to contain. Fisherman will be tougher. They all come in to work on their boats prior to putting them in the water. For that 1st week, they must outfit their boat, deal with parts and necessary repairs. They will be circulating in the community. Quarantine them for 2 weeks in the boatyard? Good luck. Even if they have a parts runner, that dude still contacts the fisherman. Rubber gloves? You would have to change them every time you handled something different. Where are all those gloves going to come from?
There is going to be a certain amount of risk that will have to be acceptable or you shut the whole place down.
Economics of the area is a concern, too many sockeye up the rivers is another.
The problem that few are talking about has more to do with our society as a whole. How long are you willing to “hunker down like a jackass in a hailstorm and take it?”.
John,
Lifes about change, change is a comin.
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst
good luck either way
Dave,
Change is one thing, but Authoritarian controls are another.
This is our chance as Americans to speak out and fight for our civil liberties before it is too late.
Just like after 9/11 the mandates rolled out by government were never rolled back.
Life after the TSA and the Patriot Act were much different in America.
Mass surveillance was called out but accepted in the name of “terror”.
Now we have state wide “shelter in place” orders…employees are told who is “essential” and who is not.
Some states even tell residents what they can and cannot buy at Walmart?
Most states will not even permit recreation into the woods or hills by your home?
National parks are closed down across the country and small businesses shuttered indefinitely?
This is no time to just sit back and accept the worst outcome because we know from history that world wide depression leads to world war.
S.S
i understand your concern completely, but rather than just think about yourself, what about the big picture.What might be best for the safety OF ALL.
And outside of your kids being at home 24/7,has your life really changed that much?
Can you recreate in the manner that you wish, can you buy what you want(foolish shortages not withstanding)?
Can you still arm yourself, or worship any deity that you wish ?
Your personal economics might be taking a hit, but then prudent financial planning dictates that you have 3-6 months savings “an emergency fund.”
The economic wheels are coming off the states fiscal position,last week there were several loads of NS crude that sold at an average of $18/brl.
If memory serves me correctly the budget squares @~$70/brl.
We have to get this perfectly crafted bug behind us, and the quicker the better.Its the lesser of two evils sort of answer.
Dave,
We are all part of the bigger picture.
This economic catastrophe could have been avoided.
20 million unemployment claims since the Corona panic hit the press?
New science points to a virus that has been around the globe since December?
Is this just another really bad flu year?
Remember the flu virus is “novel” each year.
Strains of Coronavirus have been around a very long time.
You are also wrong that my child at home is a new thing to deal with as I have been homeschooling my son all along.
My biggest concern is the suspension of liberty granted to us by the Declaration of Independence…2nd of course is the loss of economy and a global depression which will quickly lead to a world war.
I am not speaking out for myself but more for the point that we cannot continue down the road of lockdown, closures, and banning “non essential” items.
Personally, I am doing fine and was happy to see travel permitted for recreation across the state.
This is a step in the right direction and hopefully we can continue to move in that direction together.
S.S. there is hope…
“A federal judge granted a restraining order against a Kentucky mayor who promised to record the license plates of Easter church goers, calling the order “unconstitutional.”
U.S. District Court Judge Justin Walker granted the temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer from blocking Easter drive-in-services at On Fire Church, the non-profit public interest law firm First Liberty Institute announced in a Saturday press release.”
S.S
During WW 2,they had mandatory blackouts on the west coast, ration cards for food and fuel.All plastics were rationed or non existent.
This happened 2 decades before I was born.During the ’70’s oil crunch, gasoline was rationed according to either license plate or D.L numbers(cant remember which).
Even numbers on such and such day, odd numbers on the other days.
All this was done during national “crisis”,sacrifice for the common good.
And some want to whine because they are asked to chill out more than usual.
Its one thing to sound off about personal economics,quite another to b+tch about perceived loss of rights.
Dave Mc , sounds like you should move to china ,Germany or Russia. They have a government model that fits your mindset. I know a good realtor when you are ready to accept reality that Americans have a different value system. As you know our nation was founded on personal liberty. Live or die with it thats the way it is . Would you like me to address your postcard to china or russia where sacrificing for fake greater good is pushed upon all . What makes America special Dave ? Think on it .
DPR,
Kid you haven’t gone around the sun enough times, to tell me what, where,when or why I should do anything.
Dave Mc , Hitler , stalin or Mao could use the same argument you just did . We’re just doing what’s best for the collective , trust us . They were right to Dave ? Btw I wasn’t telling you what to do except consider what made America different and admired. Freedom. Step on your toes Dave ? Not as harsh as those tanks could have done to protesters at Tinamen square i bet . How about you use your brain thats circled the sun relentlessly and tell me the faults of freedom and why we should give up our civil rights ? Show me your wisdom and how your idea will benefit humanity in the long run , Oh wise master — . Im waiting with head bowed sage elder .
Can you imagine the challenges of getting the thousands of people to the Bay. Airlines do not “test” for the virus. Do you think that the major processors will “test”? The medically approved tests are improving but the vast majority still take a few days to get results. One infected person on a Charter or an airliner could cause a disaster. Do you think that these processors will simply have their people hunker down for two weeks and do nothing. Think again! And as a former Bay permit holder I can say you are correct about the exposure risks the permit holders and crews present to these small villages.
These small native dominated communities consist of small living quarters where social distancing is often impossible. Once the virus hits one of these communities it WILL spread!
Why delay this decision. Save the stakeholders the expense of gearing up. Let the fish go up the rivers. They will return. And who knows, maybe in even greater numbers. How many lives is the Governor willing to risk to offset the lost revenue. Let’s hear a number.
To your last “hunker down like a jackass point.” I never did and am still working hard at it. The only way they’re keeping me from my business is if the law drags me off at gunpoint. I’m pretty disappointed by how many people in the country are so willing and eager to give their rights away and take house arrest like it’s their due. I don’t know what’s going on and I certainly don’t have all the answers, but every bullshit detector in my body is screaming that something is very wrong, and it’s not because of the pandemic.
The comments are mostly shut down @ADN so the village idiot spends his days here, 24/7, just waiting. What an utterly useless use of a life.
Monk,
Sounds like you are down during these times, but there’s no need to be so hard on yourself buddy.
Only way they could make it work is to quarantine for two weeks before they come up here, fly on private chartered planes and quarantine again once they get here just to be sure…and even then who knows. With the food supply now being questionable with workers dying of covid and many others sick, how many of the chickens on the store shelves are contaminated, how about the beef, what about all of the other food especially the fresh food? Hardly a year goes by that there isn’t a nationwide recall of spinach or romaine lettuce, when will we get our first covid related food recall?
i’d worry about the packaging than the food itself. There’s clearly a good deal of contact infection that has been going on. somebody sneezes on the box of macaroni and cheese you buy and….
rubber gloves actually make more sense than a mask in terms of protective wear.
No doubt there is contact related infection from people in stores, but the virus only lasts so long on packaging…take your pick of studies for how many hours or days that might be. Under ideal laboratory type situations it has been shown to last much longer, ideal laboratory type situations are similar to fresh food preservation systems, cool with stable mid-range humidity levels. We might be better protected up here than the lower 48, with our built in quarantine time due to shipping.
Processors are going to “screen “ workers before they send them to Alaska. What does that mean? It is certainly not a Covid-19 test. That’s for sure!
What about the thousands of permit holders and their crew that will descend on the Bay?
I cannot imagine why Gov Dunleavy would even think about letting the fisheries go forward. If the “ petri “ dish gets out of the canneries, processors, and the thousands of fishing villages, his name might go down in history in a very unfavorable way.
Bill Gates is the guy to keep your eye on as this situation advances throughout America.
“Bill Gates is very interested in one area of medicine: vaccines…
Why?
Because governments can mandate that people get them.
And if vaccines include microchips, then you have worldwide surveillance…
The more you study this virus, the more you find the same name: Bill Gates.
He’s the 2nd largest funder of WHO.
He’s building 7 vaccine labs.
Fauci. Tedros. Event 201. ID2020…
He basically controls global health policy.
What’s the plan?
Using vaccines to track people, she concluded.”
“A report from Futurism explains the quantum dot tattoo as “tiny semiconducting crystals that reflect light” and that “glows under infrared light.” This pattern, along with the vaccine it’s hidden in, gets “delivered into the skin using hi-tech dissolvable microneedles made of a mixture of polymers and sugar,” and is coming to a vaccine clinic near you in the very near future.”
https://www.mediaite.com/news/newsmax-white-house-reporter-floats-wild-theory-that-bill-gates-is-plotting-to-use-coronavirus-to-track-people/
I did see a headline today about Fauci saying “we may need to track those who have been vaccinated”. I can’t find the article..so….
On a different note, remember when the enviros said the world would run out of oil in 50yrs? Seems the cup runneth over… wrong again…
Here you go Steve:
“Independent Michigan Rep. Justin Amash ripped a proposal from top White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci that would require Americans to carry “certificates of immunity” to prove they don’t have coronavirus.
“So police and government officials can stop us wherever we go and demand to see our papers?” Amash tweeted. “How about no.”
Bryan,
I feel you, there are so many aspects of this situation to comprehend at once.
The Gates/Fauci/ WHO team are not our elected officials and we as Americans should not be giving up an inch of our personal liberties during this flu pandemic.
People keeping pointing to the “China model” as ways to “flatten the curve” while all the new evidence points to a much lower death rate than was once projected in America.
NYC has a population density of 26,000 people per square mile where Alaska is at about 1 person per square mile….obviously the “one shoe” fits all approach will not work accross the country and Trump has been good by not declaring National Mandates so now our Govenors need to bring the country back to work wherever it is possible…and quickly before the economy is completely broken and we all are marched off into war.
Steve, Texas is doing just that next week. They had enough. Blue states will drag this oit as long at it is politically profitable..or so they think.
Interesting observation about “war”. Did you get my take about the Chinese swooping in and buying up all these broken economies? WW3 might not be too far off (within 20yrs). The world grows more dangerous by the year.
Bryan,
I must admit out of the 8 states who never issued “stay at home” orders, they are looking pretty red these days.
“People have to be responsible for themselves: Eight U.S. states still not locked down…
“I do not want to go to a shelter-in-place environment,” Hutchinson said…
It’s not about staying home, it’s about avoiding contact,” said Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota.
Oklahoma does have a “Safer at Home’’ order, but it’s only directed towards those who are a part of a vulnerable population, like the elderly and people who are immunocompromised.”
(National post)
Then there is Michigan where you cannot even buy seeds for spring gardens?
“Michigan residents and local businesses are furious over a new rule, purportedly aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus, which bars them from buying and selling seeds – now deemed a “non-essential” item.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced in a public address that “essential” businesses such as grocery stores will be restricted in what they are allowed to offer to their customers.”
“If you’re not buying food, medicine, or other essential items, you should not be going to the store,” she said.
“Big-box retailers such as Walmart were ordered to shutter entire sections of their stores – such as furniture, carpeting, plant nurseries, paint, and garden centers – beginning on April 10.”
This is starting to spiral out of effect accross the country and President Trump needs to step in and open the country back up before it is too late.
People forget the part about “unalienable rights” in our Declaration of Independence…this country has been down this road before only the last time it was a King and a Queen who dictated our freedom.
https://www.rt.com/usa/485572-michigan-seeds-sale-ban-coronavirus/
Steve,
When an elected official says that seeds are not food, it begs the question if that person should be an elected official. Not only is the seed itself food, but it obviously represents the future possibility of even more food. In even the most strict sense of the term essential food is behind only oxygen, shelter, and water.
Steve O,
I agree 100 percent that seeds are an essential item, it has me very concerned that these product bans are popping up accross the nation.
In Vermont an official (I believe the governor) banned all art supplies from being purchased at Walmart across the state?
With all children now educated through homeschooling, you would think art supplies would be encouraged at home…but that is not what is happening in VT?
S.S
With regards to item bans, all you have to do is power up the computer(or phone).I used to buy all my seed garlic and most of my veg seeds out of state for years.The same could easily be done for art supplies.
I know several people in the big town of Anch who buy nearly all food/house stuff online, including high dollar fresh organic veggies.
Never set foot in the store, its delivered to house or parking lot delivery.
Home depot, same thing.
Its a big world out there beyond the boundaries of Willow
487,000 “confirmed” cases in the US. Are these actual “confirmed” cases? Who knows..The data is skewed.
18,000 “deaths”. We know these Covid death numbers are skewed and lumped with deaths from other causes. I am going to go out on a limb and say 1/4-1/2 of those deaths are a combination of flu, cancer, diabetes, prior respiratory illness, old age, or some other severe medical condition that put the victims life in the balance regardless.
Worse yet, we are ONLY talking about 101,000 deaths WORLD WIDE.
Alaska cases – 246
Alaska “deaths” – 7
It boggles the mind. Shutdown the whole world while China swoops in and buys large portions of UK, Africa, South America, US businesses. I got to hand it to the Chinese. They are on their way to becoming the economic and military leader of the world without firing a shot..and Trump’s the bad guy…What’s to stop China comes from buying the crippled Alaskan plants?
Wish I had an answer to all this. I do not think shutting off the worlds economies, creating high unemployment, poverty, restlessness, and locking peoole in their homes is the answer. Since that is the case, $700 million is a drop in the bucket when we are talking $5+ trillion….