Ricardo Salvador on US's Dysfunctional Food System

CounterSpin

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This week on CounterSpin: As those that celebrate tuck into our Thanksgiving dinner, this year as every year, we're encouraged to be grateful for what we have, as symbolized by the food on the table. This year, as every year, we ought also to acknowledge the work that brings that harvest from the earth to the plate.

2020 has crystallized how that work couldn't be more crucial or more deeply disrespected. At every turn: From workers in the field—grievously underpaid, farmworkers are now getting a wage freeze, celebrated as "delivering lower costs" to farmers—to those who bring the food to your door: DoorDash joined with Uber and Lyft to push through California's Prop 22, letting companies keep up the "independent contractor" fiction and deny workers fair wages and protections. And what category is there for the news that, meatpackers like Tyson having got Trump to declare them economically crucial, forcing employees back into unsafe workplaces, top Tyson managers were caught taking bets on how many workers would get sick with Covid? What systemic dysfunction could more clearly indict a society that declares workers essential and treats them as expendable?

In early May, CounterSpin got some hard truths about the US food system from Ricardo Salvador, senior scientist and director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. We'll hear that conversation again this week.

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Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick back at false balance, bad faith claims of electoral fraud and coverage of violence against trans people.

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