COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in U.S. meatpacking counties

Tina L. Saitone, K Aleks Schaefer and Daniel Scheitrum

Food Policy, 2021, vol. 101, issue C

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the presence of a large meatpacking (i.e., beef, pork, and broiler chicken) plant has affected county-level COVID-19 transmission dynamics. We find that—within 150 days after emergence of COVID-19 in a given county—the presence of a large beef packing facility increases per capita infection rates by 110%, relative to comparable counties without meatpacking plants. Large pork and chicken processing facilities increase transmission rates by 160% and 20%, respectively. While the presence of this type of industrial agricultural facility is shown to exacerbate initial disease transmission affecting large numbers of individuals in the community, over time daily case rates converge such that rates observed in meatpacking- and non-meatpacking counties become similar. In aggregate, results suggest that 334 thousand COVID-19 infections are attributable to meatpacking plants in the U.S. with associated mortality and morbidity costs totaling more than $11.2 billion.

Keywords: COVID-19; Meatpacking; Computational model robustness; Rural development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 Q13 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030691922100049X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:101:y:2021:i:c:s030691922100049x

DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2021.102072

Access Statistics for this article

Food Policy is currently edited by J. Kydd

More articles in Food Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().