vox--2020-07-07--Walmart’s Amazon Prime competitor will launch in July

Amazon may have a 15-year head start , but Walmart is close to finally unveiling its own membership program that it hopes will eventually become an alternative to Amazon Prime .
Walmart plans to launch a new subscription service later this month called Walmart+ that will cost $ 98 a year .
It will include perks like same-day delivery of groceries and general merchandise , discounts on fuel at Walmart gas stations , and early access to product deals , multiple sources told Recode .
Walmart originally planned to unveil Walmart+ in late March or April , Recode reported in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the launch date after the Covid-19 pandemic began sweeping across the US in March .
It ’ s unclear whether the program will launch nationally , or first on a regional level , later this month .
While Covid-19 panic-buying helped boost Walmart sales to record highs earlier this year , its US e-commerce presence is still only around an eighth the size of Amazon ’ s .
Today , Amazon is valued at $ 1.5 trillion , while Walmart is worth $ 337 billion .
And Amazon Prime is a big reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Prime has become a loyalty program that now boasts more than 150 million members globally and sports a portfolio of perks , including express delivery of groceries and other items , access to a large catalog of TV shows and movies , as well as exclusive discounts at Whole Foods stores .
Amazon Prime members , who pay $ 119 annually in the US , shop more frequently and spend more on Amazon than non-Prime members do .
They also do price comparisons less across competitor sites .
Perhaps most problematic for Walmart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of its top-spending families now have Amazon Prime memberships , Recode previously reported .
It ’ s a trend that has been several years in the making , as Amazon has made moves for Prime to appeal to households with less disposable income that historically have favored shopping at Walmart .
Amazon added a monthly payment option for Prime in 2016 , a 45 percent Prime fee discount for those on government assistance in 2017 , and ways for Prime customers to pay for orders with cash last year .
While Walmart ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Amazon ’ s , one fear at the Bentonville , Arkansas , retailer is that top Walmart customers could eventually turn to Amazon for groceries as well , as they get sucked further into the Prime suite of perks .
When Walmart+ launches , the $ 98 annual membership is expected to include unlimited same-day delivery of groceries and other goods from Walmart Supercenters , reserved delivery slots and open-slot notifications , as well as some access to Walmart ’ s new Express two-hour delivery offering , though not unlimited usage .
During @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues securing grocery delivery slots in some parts of the country as companies like Walmart and Amazon struggled to handle drastic increases in demand for online grocery services .
Walmart+ perks are also expected to include discounts on fuel at Walmart gas stations , early access to some product deals , and a Scan & Go service that would allow shoppers to check out in Walmart stores without waiting in line — a tool Walmart briefly tested but discontinued nearly two years ago .
A Walmart+-branded credit card will also be introduced at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has plans to add video entertainment components to the program , though the details of this remain unclear .
This week , Walmart is unveiling an online family entertainment program called CAMP by Walmart , in partnership with the retail startup CAMP and the online video technology firm Eko .
This video content , featuring celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris , Drew Barrymore , and LeBron James , will be free to all Walmart app users this summer .
But the program could point to a future where similar programming is gated off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considered partnering with big media companies on video content perks .
The timing of the Walmart+ unveiling could both create opportunities for Walmart and present new challenges .
On one hand , as Recode recently reported , “ the share of people who said they have a positive impression of Amazon dropped from 74 percent in January before the pandemic hit the US to 58 percent in May in two similar , separate polls of more than 1,000 people conducted by Survey Monkey with Fortune and Recode , respectively.
” Amazon customers have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , especially in March and April , in part due to the company ’ s focus for several weeks on prioritizing delivery of essential items .
The pandemic has also accelerated adoption of grocery delivery while simultaneously forcing tens of millions of Americans out of work , which could make fuel discounts especially attractive .
But at the same time , those same record unemployment numbers could call into question the timing of introducing a program that is asking customers to spend more with you than they have during even good economic times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a top priority for Janey Whiteside , the company ’ s chief customer officer who joined from American Express in 2018 , according to sources .
Other top Walmart leaders , including CEO Doug McMillon , have also been active in planning , signaling the importance of the initiative .
Walmart executives have hoped the program would strike a balance of being valuable enough that customers will pay for it , while boasting different enough perks from Amazon Prime so that there aren ’ t perk-by-perk comparisons .
Shoppers will soon be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Amazon may have a 15-year head start, but Walmart is close to finally unveiling its own membership program that it hopes will eventually become an alternative to Amazon Prime.
Walmart had planned to launch a new subscription service in July called Walmart+ that will cost $98 a year. It will include perks like same-day delivery of groceries and general merchandise, discounts on fuel at Walmart gas stations, and early access to product deals, multiple sources told Recode.
But Walmart has once again delayed the launch of Walmart+, Recode has learned. It’s unclear whether there’s a new internal launch date and whether the program will launch nationally or first on a regional level when the company finally unveils it. Walmart originally planned to launch Walmart+ in late March or April, Recode reported in February, but the retailer first pushed back the date to July after the Covid-19 pandemic began sweeping across the US in March.
A Walmart spokesperson declined to comment on the Walmart+ launch.
While Covid-19 panic-buying helped boost Walmart sales to record highs earlier this year, its US e-commerce presence is still only around an eighth the size of Amazon’s. Today, Amazon is valued at $1.56 trillion, while Walmart is worth $372 billion. And Amazon Prime is a big reason why.
Launched in 2005, Amazon Prime has become a loyalty program that now boasts more than 150 million members globally and sports a portfolio of perks, including express delivery of groceries and other items, access to a large catalog of TV shows and movies, as well as exclusive discounts at Whole Foods stores. Amazon Prime members, who pay $119 annually in the US, shop more frequently and spend more on Amazon than non-Prime members do. They also do price comparisons less across competitor sites.
Perhaps most problematic for Walmart is the fact that more than half of its top-spending families now have Amazon Prime memberships, Recode previously reported. It’s a trend that has been several years in the making, as Amazon has made moves for Prime to appeal to households with less disposable income that historically have favored shopping at Walmart.
Amazon added a monthly payment option for Prime in 2016, a 45 percent Prime fee discount for those on government assistance in 2017, and ways for Prime customers to pay for orders with cash last year. While Walmart’s overall grocery business is larger than Amazon’s, one fear at the Bentonville, Arkansas, retailer is that top Walmart customers could eventually turn to Amazon for groceries as well, as they get sucked further into the Prime suite of perks.
When Walmart+ launches, the $98 annual membership is expected to include unlimited same-day delivery of groceries and other goods from Walmart Supercenters, reserved delivery slots and open-slot notifications, as well as some access to Walmart’s new Express two-hour delivery offering, though not unlimited usage. During the pandemic, customers have run into issues securing grocery delivery slots in some parts of the country as companies like Walmart and Amazon struggled to handle drastic increases in demand for online grocery services.
Walmart+ perks are also expected to include discounts on fuel at Walmart gas stations, early access to some product deals, and a Scan & Go service that would allow shoppers to check out in Walmart stores without waiting in line — a tool Walmart briefly tested but discontinued nearly two years ago. A Walmart+-branded credit card will also be introduced at some point after launch.
Walmart also has plans to add video entertainment components to the program, though the details of this remain unclear. In July, Walmart unveiled an online family entertainment program called CAMP by Walmart, in partnership with the retail startup CAMP and the online video technology firm Eko. This video content, featuring celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris, Drew Barrymore, and LeBron James, will be free to all Walmart app users this summer. But the program could point to a future where similar programming is gated off for Walmart+ members. Walmart has also considered partnering with big media companies on video content perks.
The timing of the Walmart+ unveiling could both create opportunities for Walmart and present new challenges. On one hand, as Recode recently reported, “the share of people who said they have a positive impression of Amazon dropped from 74 percent in January before the pandemic hit the US to 58 percent in May in two similar, separate polls of more than 1,000 people conducted by Survey Monkey with Fortune and Recode, respectively.” Amazon customers have seen extended delivery times during the pandemic, especially in March and April, in part due to the company’s focus for several weeks on prioritizing delivery of essential items.
The pandemic has also accelerated adoption of grocery delivery while simultaneously forcing tens of millions of Americans out of work, which could make fuel discounts especially attractive. But at the same time, those same record unemployment numbers could call into question the timing of introducing a program that is asking customers to spend more with you than they have during even good economic times.
Either way, the Walmart+ initiative is a top priority for Janey Whiteside, the company’s chief customer officer who joined from American Express in 2018, according to sources. Other top Walmart leaders, including CEO Doug McMillon, have also been active in planning, signaling the importance of the initiative. Walmart executives have hoped the program would strike a balance of being valuable enough that customers will pay for it, while boasting different enough perks from Amazon Prime so that there aren’t perk-by-perk comparisons. Shoppers should soon be able to decide for themselves.
Update, August 4, 3:55 pm ET: This post has been updated to include the Walmart+ launch delay.


vox--2020-07-07--Why did you watch Tiger King on Netflix?

Did you watch Tiger King during the quarantine ?
A lot of us did .
Netflix ’ s true-crime documentary about tiger breeders battling it out with animal rights activists was released in late March .
Within a month , some 64 million people had watched at least some of the series .
This was during the same time that millions of people were stuck at home for lockdown and decided to subscribe to Netflix .
But did all of those Netflix users watch Tiger King because they wanted to or because their friends told them to ?
Or was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its vaunted recommendation algorithm ?
That ’ s the question we explore on the latest episode of Land of the Giants : The Netflix Effect .
And more broadly , we wanted to get a better understanding of how Netflix uses the vast trove of data it collects about its viewers ’ habits .
At this point , most of us know that big tech companies often surveil their users and then use the information they gather to decide what their users are likely to see or engage with .
The downside of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Facebook ’ s and Google ’ s many critics .
The stakes seem lower for Netflix .
For instance , to date , no one has accused the company of subverting democracy in the US .
And Netflix says it doesn ’ t hoover up nearly as much of your data as other big tech companies because it ’ s not in the ad business and doesn ’ t need that level of information .
But Netflix does take very detailed notes about the way its 200 million users behave when they watch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data to help figure out what you might want to watch — and to figure out the best way to present that choice to you .
Even if Netflix thinks you and your friend both want to watch , say , Floor Is Lava , it may show each of you different images or clips from the show based on what it knows about your viewing habits .
But our big question is whether Netflix has a bias about who owns the stuff it shows you .
It ’ s an increasingly relevant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ license their stuff to Netflix claw that content back so they can power their own competing streaming services .
Which is why Friends has left Netflix for HBO Max , and The Office is going to Comcast ’ s Peacock , and why most of Disney ’ s TV shows and movies have moved to Disney+ .
So it would seem obvious that Netflix would want to promote shows it makes and owns , like Tiger King and Floor Is Lava , because it can keep those shows , as opposed to ones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Which is why we asked Netflix executives and people outside of the company if that ’ s actually happening .
You can hear their answers on the player below , or on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Spotify , Stitcher , or wherever you like to listen to podcasts .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Did you watch Tiger King during the quarantine?
A lot of us did. Netflix’s true-crime documentary about tiger breeders battling it out with animal rights activists was released in late March. Within a month, some 64 million people had watched at least some of the series.
This was during the same time that millions of people were stuck at home for lockdown and decided to subscribe to Netflix.
But did all of those Netflix users watch Tiger King because they wanted to or because their friends told them to? Or was it because Netflix told them to via its vaunted recommendation algorithm?
That’s the question we explore on the latest episode of Land of the Giants: The Netflix Effect.
And more broadly, we wanted to get a better understanding of how Netflix uses the vast trove of data it collects about its viewers’ habits.
At this point, most of us know that big tech companies often surveil their users and then use the information they gather to decide what their users are likely to see or engage with. The downside of that can be obvious: Just ask Facebook’s and Google’s many critics.
The stakes seem lower for Netflix. For instance, to date, no one has accused the company of subverting democracy in the US. And Netflix says it doesn’t hoover up nearly as much of your data as other big tech companies because it’s not in the ad business and doesn’t need that level of information.
But Netflix does take very detailed notes about the way its 200 million users behave when they watch Netflix.
It says it uses that data to help figure out what you might want to watch — and to figure out the best way to present that choice to you. Even if Netflix thinks you and your friend both want to watch, say, Floor Is Lava, it may show each of you different images or clips from the show based on what it knows about your viewing habits.
But our big question is whether Netflix has a bias about who owns the stuff it shows you.
It’s an increasingly relevant question as media companies that used to license their stuff to Netflix claw that content back so they can power their own competing streaming services. Which is why Friends has left Netflix for HBO Max, and The Office is going to Comcast’s Peacock, and why most of Disney’s TV shows and movies have moved to Disney+.
So it would seem obvious that Netflix would want to promote shows it makes and owns, like Tiger King and Floor Is Lava, because it can keep those shows, as opposed to ones that will eventually leave for another streamer.
Which is why we asked Netflix executives and people outside of the company if that’s actually happening. You can hear their answers on the player below, or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.


vox--2020-07-07--Canada’s “national shame”: Covid-19 in nursing homes

Canada ’ s response to the coronavirus pandemic has generally been viewed as a success , with experts pointing to its political leadership and universal health care system as factors .
But there has been one glaring failure in Canada ’ s fight against the pandemic : its inability to protect the health of its senior citizens in nursing homes and long-term care facilities .
The situation for these seniors is so dire that the police — and even the military — have been called in to investigate why so many are dying .
In Quebec , some residents have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , going hungry and thirsty , and 31 residents were found dead at one home in less than a month , leading to accusations of gross negligence .
In Ontario , the military found shocking conditions in five homes : cockroaches and rotten food , blatant disregard for infection control measures , and treatment of residents that was deemed “ borderline abusive , if not abusive.
” “ It ’ s a national shame , ” said Nathan Stall , a geriatrician at Toronto ’ s Sinai Health System .
“ I don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a good job at all in Canada.
” A whopping 81 percent of the country ’ s coronavirus deaths are linked to nursing homes and long-term care facilities .
That means roughly 7,050 out of 8,700 deaths to date have been among residents and workers in these facilities .
In terms of raw numbers , that may not seem like very much .
( For comparison , more than 40,000 US coronavirus deaths have been linked to nursing homes . )
And , to be clear , Canada is hardly alone in watching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US and Europe have seen startling numbers of fatalities among nursing home staffers and residents .
But 81 percent is a staggering statistic , especially for Canada , a country that prides itself on its progressive health policies .
And it ’ s higher than the rate in any other country for which we have good data .
In European countries , roughly 50 percent of coronavirus deaths are linked to these facilities .
In the US , it ’ s 40 percent .
Experts say a number of factors are probably involved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nursing home front , like the fact that Canada has done well at controlling community spread outside these facilities ( making nursing home deaths account for a greater share of overall deaths ) and that residents in Canadian homes tend to be older and frailer than those in US homes ( and thus more vulnerable to severe cases of Covid-19 ) .
But they say the high death rate in the homes is due , in large part , to egregious problems with the homes themselves .
“ I think we have serious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vivian Stamatopoulos , a professor at Ontario Tech University who specializes in family caregiving .
Experts have been warning political leaders about this for years , but , she said , “ they ’ ve all been playing the game of pass the long-term care hot potato.
” Furious over how their elders are being treated , some Canadians have started petitions , protests , lawsuits , and even hunger strikes outside the homes .
They say the government ’ s failure to respond reveals a deeper failure to care about seniors and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that care concrete by sending facilities what they urgently need : more tests , more personal protective equipment ( PPE ) , and more funding to pay staff members so they don ’ t have to work multiple jobs at different facilities .
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged that the situation in the facilities is “ deeply disturbing.
” He ’ s sent hundreds of military troops to help feed and care for the seniors in certain homes , where burnout and fear have prompted some staff members to flee their charges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s hands are tied because the facilities fall under provincial jurisdiction .
That leaves families terrified for their loved ones .
They ’ re asking : Why have things gone so terribly wrong ?
How could this happen in Canada ?
Canada ’ s crisis was a long time in the making The first thing to understand is that Canada ’ s universal health care system does not cover nursing homes and long-term care facilities .
That means these institutions are not insured by the federal system .
Different provinces offer different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within a given province , you ’ ll find that some homes are publicly run , others are run by nonprofits , and still others are run by for-profit entities .
“ This is the main problem — they don ’ t fall under the Canada Health Act , ” said Stamatopoulos , adding that the same is not true of hospitals .
“ That ’ s why you see that the hospitals did so well .
They had the resources.
” From the standpoint of someone in the US , where more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Canada may seem to be doing well overall : The death toll there is around 8,700 .
Per capita , Canada ’ s coronavirus death rate is roughly half that of America ’ s .
It ’ s clear that the northern neighbor has been doing better at keeping case numbers down , partly because it ’ s giving safer advice on easing social distancing .
Which makes the dire situation in nursing homes stand out even more .
Longstanding problems with Canada ’ s nursing homes have clearly fueled the tragic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chronically understaffed .
They tend to hire part-time workers , underpay them , and not offer them sick leave benefits .
That means the workers have to take multiple jobs at different facilities , potentially spreading the virus between them .
Many are immigrants or asylum seekers , and they fear putting their precarious employment at risk by , say , taking a sick day when they need it .
( These problems aren ’ t unique to Canada , but as in other countries , they ’ ve been thrown into stark @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of Canadian homes also have poor infrastructure , built to the outdated design standards of the 1970s .
Residents often live four to a room , share a bathroom , and congregate in crowded common spaces .
That makes it very difficult to isolate those who get sick .
These problems are even worse in Canada ’ s for-profit nursing homes .
Research shows that these private facilities provide inferior care for seniors compared to the public facilities , in large part because they hire fewer staff members and put fewer resources @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The for-profit model incentivizes cost-cutting .
( Similarly problematic profit motives and poor living conditions persist in US nursing homes , too . )
Canadian experts have been raising the alarm about these issues for more than a decade .
So why haven ’ t they been addressed ?
“ Frankly , overall , it really reflects ageism in society .
We choose not to invest in frail older adults , ” Stall said .
He added that early on in the pandemic , the public imagination latched onto stories of relatively young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospitals and their staff got resources , free food , nightly applause .
Homes for older people didn ’ t get the same attention .
“ Nursing homes are not something we ’ re proud of societally .
There ’ s a lot of shame around even having someone in a nursing home , ” Stall said .
Stamatopoulos noted there are other forces at play , too .
“ I ’ d say it ’ s a trifecta of ageism , racism , and sexism , ” she said .
“ When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s majority female older residents being cared for by majority racialized women.
” Ronnie Cahana , a 66-year-old rabbi who lives with paralysis at the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Montreal , recently wrote a letter to Quebec ’ s premier .
“ I am not a statistic .
I am a fully sentient , confident human being , who needs to have my humanity honored , ” he wrote , adding that the premier should help the workers who take care of people like him .
“ Many of them are immigrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
… Please give them all the resources they require .
Listen to their voices.
” How to make nursing homes safer — in Canada and beyond If you want to keep nursing homes from becoming coronavirus hot spots , look to the strategies that have proven effective elsewhere .
For months now , Canadian public health experts and advocates have been begging leaders to do just that .
All residents and workers in nursing homes should be tested regularly , whether they show symptoms or not .
Anyone who gets sick should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the building or taken to the hospital .
Workers should be given adequate PPE , and universal masking among them should be mandatory .
Working at multiple homes during the pandemic should be disallowed .
“ Look at South Korea .
They ’ ve had no deaths in long-term care because they treated it like SARS right from the get-go , ” Stamatopoulos said .
“ They did aggressive testing .
They were strict in terms of quarantining any infected residents and were quick to move them to hospitals .
We ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic , some Canadian hospitals sent recovering Covid-19 patients back to their nursing homes too soon ; they inadvertently infected others .
“ And look at New York state , ” Stamatopoulos continued .
“ Gov .
Cuomo signed an executive order on May 10 requiring all staff and residents to be tested twice a week .
That aggressive testing helped halt the outbreaks in the homes.
” Quebec and Ontario have yet to do this .
British Columbia , a Canadian standout at preventing deaths in nursing homes , adopted several wise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March 27 , the western province made it illegal to work in more than one home — and topped up workers ’ wages so they wouldn ’ t have to .
It gave them full-time jobs and sick leave benefits .
It ’ s clear that so long as long-term care falls under provincial jurisdiction , nursing home residents will be better off in some provinces than in others .
So some Canadian experts , including Stamatopoulos , are arguing that these facilities should be nationalized under the Canada Health Act .
Others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer ; Stall thinks it may make sense to target only for-profit homes , compelling them to improve their poor infrastructure .
In the long term , any homes that do not meet modern standards should be redesigned .
Another lesson for the long term comes from Hong Kong , which has managed to totally avoid deaths in its nursing homes .
Even before the coronavirus came along , all homes had a trained infection controller who put precautions in place to prevent the spread of infections .
( US homes saw a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but President Trump has proposed that it be rolled back . )
Four times a year , Hong Kong ’ s homes underwent pandemic preparedness drills so that if an outbreak occurred , they ’ d be ready with best practices .
It did , and they were .
Preparedness clearly saves lives .
Hopefully , Canada and other countries will learn that lesson going forward so that no more lives are needlessly lost .
As Cahana , the resident in the Montreal home , said , “ Each of us is crying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ More life !
Please !
We are not afraid of the future .
We are afraid that society is forgetting us.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Canada’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has generally been viewed as a success, with experts pointing to its political leadership and universal health care system as factors.
But there has been one glaring failure in Canada’s fight against the pandemic: its inability to protect the health of its senior citizens in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
The situation for these seniors is so dire that the police — and even the military — have been called in to investigate why so many are dying.
In Quebec, some residents have been left for days in soiled diapers, going hungry and thirsty, and 31 residents were found dead at one home in less than a month, leading to accusations of gross negligence. In Ontario, the military found shocking conditions in five homes: cockroaches and rotten food, blatant disregard for infection control measures, and treatment of residents that was deemed “borderline abusive, if not abusive.”
“It’s a national shame,” said Nathan Stall, a geriatrician at Toronto’s Sinai Health System. “I don’t think we’ve done a good job at all in Canada.”
A whopping 81 percent of the country’s coronavirus deaths are linked to nursing homes and long-term care facilities. That means roughly 7,050 out of 8,700 deaths to date have been among residents and workers in these facilities.
In terms of raw numbers, that may not seem like very much. (For comparison, more than 40,000 US coronavirus deaths have been linked to nursing homes.) And, to be clear, Canada is hardly alone in watching tragedy unfold in these facilities. The US and Europe have seen startling numbers of fatalities among nursing home staffers and residents.
But 81 percent is a staggering statistic, especially for Canada, a country that prides itself on its progressive health policies. And it’s higher than the rate in any other country for which we have good data. In European countries, roughly 50 percent of coronavirus deaths are linked to these facilities. In the US, it’s 40 percent.
Experts say a number of factors are probably involved in Canada’s collapse on the nursing home front, like the fact that Canada has done well at controlling community spread outside these facilities (making nursing home deaths account for a greater share of overall deaths) and that residents in Canadian homes tend to be older and frailer than those in US homes (and thus more vulnerable to severe cases of Covid-19). But they say the high death rate in the homes is due, in large part, to egregious problems with the homes themselves.
“I think we have serious issues with long-term care,” said Vivian Stamatopoulos, a professor at Ontario Tech University who specializes in family caregiving. Experts have been warning political leaders about this for years, but, she said, “they’ve all been playing the game of pass the long-term care hot potato.”
Furious over how their elders are being treated, some Canadians have started petitions, protests, lawsuits, and even hunger strikes outside the homes. They say the government’s failure to respond reveals a deeper failure to care about seniors and people with disabilities, and to make that care concrete by sending facilities what they urgently need: more tests, more personal protective equipment (PPE), and more funding to pay staff members so they don’t have to work multiple jobs at different facilities.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has acknowledged that the situation in the facilities is “deeply disturbing.” He’s sent hundreds of military troops to help feed and care for the seniors in certain homes, where burnout and fear have prompted some staff members to flee their charges. But to some extent, Trudeau’s hands are tied because the facilities fall under provincial jurisdiction.
That leaves families terrified for their loved ones. They’re asking: Why have things gone so terribly wrong? How could this happen in Canada?
Canada’s crisis was a long time in the making
The first thing to understand is that Canada’s universal health care system does not cover nursing homes and long-term care facilities. That means these institutions are not insured by the federal system. Different provinces offer different levels of cost coverage, and even within a given province, you’ll find that some homes are publicly run, others are run by nonprofits, and still others are run by for-profit entities.
“This is the main problem — they don’t fall under the Canada Health Act,” said Stamatopoulos, adding that the same is not true of hospitals. “That’s why you see that the hospitals did so well. They had the resources.”
From the standpoint of someone in the US, where more than 132,000 people have died of Covid-19, Canada may seem to be doing well overall: The death toll there is around 8,700. Per capita, Canada’s coronavirus death rate is roughly half that of America’s. It’s clear that the northern neighbor has been doing better at keeping case numbers down, partly because it’s giving safer advice on easing social distancing.
Which makes the dire situation in nursing homes stand out even more. Longstanding problems with Canada’s nursing homes have clearly fueled the tragic situation unfolding there.
These homes are chronically understaffed. They tend to hire part-time workers, underpay them, and not offer them sick leave benefits. That means the workers have to take multiple jobs at different facilities, potentially spreading the virus between them. Many are immigrants or asylum seekers, and they fear putting their precarious employment at risk by, say, taking a sick day when they need it. (These problems aren’t unique to Canada, but as in other countries, they’ve been thrown into stark relief by the pandemic.)
A lot of Canadian homes also have poor infrastructure, built to the outdated design standards of the 1970s. Residents often live four to a room, share a bathroom, and congregate in crowded common spaces. That makes it very difficult to isolate those who get sick.
These problems are even worse in Canada’s for-profit nursing homes. Research shows that these private facilities provide inferior care for seniors compared to the public facilities, in large part because they hire fewer staff members and put fewer resources into upgrading or redesigning their buildings. The for-profit model incentivizes cost-cutting. (Similarly problematic profit motives and poor living conditions persist in US nursing homes, too.)
Canadian experts have been raising the alarm about these issues for more than a decade. So why haven’t they been addressed?
“Frankly, overall, it really reflects ageism in society. We choose not to invest in frail older adults,” Stall said. He added that early on in the pandemic, the public imagination latched onto stories of relatively young people on ventilators in hospitals. The hospitals and their staff got resources, free food, nightly applause. Homes for older people didn’t get the same attention.
“Nursing homes are not something we’re proud of societally. There’s a lot of shame around even having someone in a nursing home,” Stall said.
Stamatopoulos noted there are other forces at play, too. “I’d say it’s a trifecta of ageism, racism, and sexism,” she said. “When you look at this industry, it’s majority female older residents being cared for by majority racialized women.”
Ronnie Cahana, a 66-year-old rabbi who lives with paralysis at the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Montreal, recently wrote a letter to Quebec’s premier. “I am not a statistic. I am a fully sentient, confident human being, who needs to have my humanity honored,” he wrote, adding that the premier should help the workers who take care of people like him. “Many of them are immigrants, newly beginning their lives in Quebec. … Please give them all the resources they require. Listen to their voices.”
How to make nursing homes safer — in Canada and beyond
If you want to keep nursing homes from becoming coronavirus hot spots, look to the strategies that have proven effective elsewhere. For months now, Canadian public health experts and advocates have been begging leaders to do just that.
All residents and workers in nursing homes should be tested regularly, whether they show symptoms or not. Anyone who gets sick should be isolated in a separate part of the building or taken to the hospital. Workers should be given adequate PPE, and universal masking among them should be mandatory. Working at multiple homes during the pandemic should be disallowed.
“Look at South Korea. They’ve had no deaths in long-term care because they treated it like SARS right from the get-go,” Stamatopoulos said. “They did aggressive testing. They were strict in terms of quarantining any infected residents and were quick to move them to hospitals. We’ve done the opposite.” Earlier in the pandemic, some Canadian hospitals sent recovering Covid-19 patients back to their nursing homes too soon; they inadvertently infected others.
“And look at New York state,” Stamatopoulos continued. “Gov. Cuomo signed an executive order on May 10 requiring all staff and residents to be tested twice a week. That aggressive testing helped halt the outbreaks in the homes.” Quebec and Ontario have yet to do this.
British Columbia, a Canadian standout at preventing deaths in nursing homes, adopted several wise measures early on. Way back on March 27, the western province made it illegal to work in more than one home — and topped up workers’ wages so they wouldn’t have to. It gave them full-time jobs and sick leave benefits.
It’s clear that so long as long-term care falls under provincial jurisdiction, nursing home residents will be better off in some provinces than in others. So some Canadian experts, including Stamatopoulos, are arguing that these facilities should be nationalized under the Canada Health Act. Others are not sure that’s the answer; Stall thinks it may make sense to target only for-profit homes, compelling them to improve their poor infrastructure. In the long term, any homes that do not meet modern standards should be redesigned.
Another lesson for the long term comes from Hong Kong, which has managed to totally avoid deaths in its nursing homes. Even before the coronavirus came along, all homes had a trained infection controller who put precautions in place to prevent the spread of infections. (US homes saw a similar system enacted under President Obama, but President Trump has proposed that it be rolled back.) Four times a year, Hong Kong’s homes underwent pandemic preparedness drills so that if an outbreak occurred, they’d be ready with best practices. It did, and they were.
Preparedness clearly saves lives. Hopefully, Canada and other countries will learn that lesson going forward so that no more lives are needlessly lost.
As Cahana, the resident in the Montreal home, said, “Each of us is crying to be heard. We say: More life! Please! We are not afraid of the future. We are afraid that society is forgetting us.”


vox--2020-07-07--In Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, the closing of a dive bar stands in for the end of the world

There ’ s a reason dive bars and pubs have always provided fruitful settings for storytelling , from The Iceman Cometh to Cheers .
A great drinking establishment has stories scratched into its furniture , history in its grime .
No shiny veneers or $ 15 cocktails ; just slightly tacky surfaces and the same guy behind the bar , who ’ s been slinging pints for as long as anyone can remember .
Local watering holes have one-time visitors and occasional customers , but most importantly , they have regulars .
One way to judge a bar is by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s why it feels like a tragedy whenever a beloved old bar or pub or tavern shuts down .
Inevitably , it was more than just a place to pass the time and have a drink ( or too many drinks ) .
It was a “ third place , ” an in-between space where time seems to pause .
People relax and let their guard down .
They fight and argue and tell tall tales , and over time , they get to be friends .
Or family .
On the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feels like a glimpse of heaven .
On most nights , it ’ s where you go to escape the world outside for a while .
That feeling , of a bar as a haven from the madding world , is at the heart of Bloody Nose , Empty Pockets .
Documentarians and brothers Bill and Turner Ross chronicle the last night of service for a Las Vegas dive bar called Roaring ’ 20s , as regulars come and go , fight and kiss , and try to face the fact that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theirs will no longer exist .
For them , it ’ s the end of the world .
But there ’ s a catch : The bar never exactly existed .
While the Ross brothers have most often made documentaries , for Bloody Nose , Empty Pockets they used a different bar as a set ( in New Orleans ! )
and hired people to play characters much like themselves .
Then they shot the film over three days , including a marathon 18-hour session that covered the entire “ last day ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Is the movie fiction ?
Yes , technically .
Is it nonfiction ?
Not exactly .
Is it “ real ” ?
Absolutely .
You can catch glimpses of film crew members in the bar ’ s mirrors , and the camerawork throughout feels more like the stuff of vérité than most fictional films , which tend to use a more controlled style .
The Rosses had a plan for how the day would play out — what time people would show up , when they ’ d leave , roughly what would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set script , so the “ regulars ” develop their characters and relationships in real time .
It feels very much like you ’ ve stumbled into a dive bar as it closes up shop .
The bar ’ s regulars aren ’ t up-and-coming Vegas insiders .
They ’ re mostly people who feel disillusioned , defeated by the world : old drunks , former performers , self-proclaimed failures , people scratching out a living on the edge of the city that most resembles America ’ s id .
The action of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entirely within the bar , but through conversations between the regulars and hints of the outside that break through on the TV , we glimpse and remember what the characters are trying to escape — a world that feels like it ’ s imploding .
Watching Bloody Nose , Empty Pockets is like listening to a long , slow lament .
Years pass while we sip a pint and recount the same old stories to the same old faces .
Everyone ages .
Relationships and friendships come and go .
Nothing lasts forever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grizzled bar in town , a place that seems older than time .
The film is a beautifully empathetic work of art .
Bloody Nose , Empty Pockets premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24 , 2020 .
It opened in virtual theatrical release beginning July 8 .
A list of participating theaters is available on the film ’ s website .
( You ’ ll receive a rental link , and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page . )

There’s a reason dive bars and pubs have always provided fruitful settings for storytelling, from The Iceman Cometh to Cheers. A great drinking establishment has stories scratched into its furniture, history in its grime. No shiny veneers or $15 cocktails; just slightly tacky surfaces and the same guy behind the bar, who’s been slinging pints for as long as anyone can remember. Local watering holes have one-time visitors and occasional customers, but most importantly, they have regulars. One way to judge a bar is by its most familiar faces.
And that’s why it feels like a tragedy whenever a beloved old bar or pub or tavern shuts down. Inevitably, it was more than just a place to pass the time and have a drink (or too many drinks). It was a “third place,” an in-between space where time seems to pause. People relax and let their guard down. They fight and argue and tell tall tales, and over time, they get to be friends. Or family. On the best of nights, a great bar feels like a glimpse of heaven. On most nights, it’s where you go to escape the world outside for a while.
Rating: 4 out of 5 vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark
That feeling, of a bar as a haven from the madding world, is at the heart of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets. Documentarians and brothers Bill and Turner Ross chronicle the last night of service for a Las Vegas dive bar called Roaring ’20s, as regulars come and go, fight and kiss, and try to face the fact that the place that felt most like it was theirs will no longer exist. For them, it’s the end of the world.
But there’s a catch: The bar never exactly existed. While the Ross brothers have most often made documentaries, for Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets they used a different bar as a set (in New Orleans!) and hired people to play characters much like themselves. Then they shot the film over three days, including a marathon 18-hour session that covered the entire “last day” of the bar’s operations.
Is the movie fiction? Yes, technically. Is it nonfiction? Not exactly. Is it “real”? Absolutely.
You can catch glimpses of film crew members in the bar’s mirrors, and the camerawork throughout feels more like the stuff of vérité than most fictional films, which tend to use a more controlled style. The Rosses had a plan for how the day would play out — what time people would show up, when they’d leave, roughly what would happen in the meantime — but no set script, so the “regulars” develop their characters and relationships in real time. It feels very much like you’ve stumbled into a dive bar as it closes up shop.
The bar’s regulars aren’t up-and-coming Vegas insiders. They’re mostly people who feel disillusioned, defeated by the world: old drunks, former performers, self-proclaimed failures, people scratching out a living on the edge of the city that most resembles America’s id. The action of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets happens almost entirely within the bar, but through conversations between the regulars and hints of the outside that break through on the TV, we glimpse and remember what the characters are trying to escape — a world that feels like it’s imploding.
Watching Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is like listening to a long, slow lament. Years pass while we sip a pint and recount the same old stories to the same old faces. Everyone ages. Relationships and friendships come and go. Nothing lasts forever, not even the grimiest, most grizzled bar in town, a place that seems older than time. The film is a beautifully empathetic work of art.
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020. It opened in virtual theatrical release beginning July 8. A list of participating theaters is available on the film’s website. (You’ll receive a rental link, and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page.)


vox--2020-07-08--Farmers and animal rights activists are coming together to fight big factory farms

About a year before Sen. Cory Booker officially ran for president , he took a trip through the Midwest , meeting voters in the states he knew he ’ d need to win .
One visit , in particular , sticks in his mind .
It was in the home of a Republican farmer , a man who told Booker ’ s team he wasn ’ t sure he wanted to host the senator because “ this is a Christian household.
” Booker is Christian , but he knew what that meant : He ’ s vegan , liberal , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Jersey .
Booker wasn ’ t the kind of politician this farmer saw as his own .
Booker tried to loosen the guy up with dad jokes .
“ I told him his cows were udderly amazing , ” Booker recalls .
Nothing .
The breakthrough came when the farmer began telling Booker about “ the hell ” he and his neighbors found themselves in .
They used to sell their cows to five different companies , which meant if a buyer didn ’ t give them a good price or demanded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they could go to another .
But the industry had consolidated .
Now there was one buyer , and that buyer controlled everything .
The farmers had been reduced from entrepreneurs to serfs .
Here , finally , was common ground .
The farmer hated what his business had become , and so did Booker .
This was a story Booker heard again and again .
And it carried the seed of an idea .
Booker is a vegan , and so he knows , better than most , how unpopular veganism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people with drug addiction were viewed more negatively .
Asked during a September CNN town hall whether he thought others should become vegan , Booker said “ no , ” before pivoting to discuss the problems of factory farming .
In an MSNBC interview , he laughed off the idea of a “ radical vegan agenda , ” reassuring voters he doesn ’ t think “ government should be telling Americans what to eat.
” But Booker realized there was a place that vegans and farmers could come together : Both of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mechanized the meat market , forcing farmers into using massive , cruel , and environmentally devastating confined animal feeding operations , or CAFOs .
The agricultural industry has an unusual structure : Virtually every node in the industry is highly concentrated around a few megaproducers .
That ’ s true for seeds , for pesticides , for machines , for production .
And concentration has been increasing , and fast .
In 1980 , 34 percent of pigs were slaughtered by the four largest meatpacking companies .
By 2015 , that had nearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the food is still grown , and the animals still raised , on family farms .
These farms are , in theory , independent , but in practice , they bear the risks of independence without the expected freedoms .
The megaproducers they buy from and sell to have all the leverage ; farmers are left with little choice save to accept the onerous , binding contracts they ’ re offered .
As the Center for American Progress puts it , “ growing corporate power has left relatively small farms and ranches vulnerable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oligopolies with which they do business.
” The results , for farmers , have been disastrous .
In 2018 , median farm income was negative $ 1,840 — meaning most farms lost money .
Farmers saw a 50 percent drop in income since 2013 .
Adjusted for inflation , farm incomes have been stagnant for the past 30 years .
As a result , farmers are buried in debt : The sector ’ s debt-to-income ratio is the highest it ’ s been since the farm crisis of the mid ’ 80s .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to comment for this story , and the National Cattlemen ’ s Beef Association did not reply to a request for comment . )
As farmers have lost control of their livelihoods , they ’ ve also lost control of their animals , their crops , and their land .
They have no choice but to contract with companies that dictate the way they raise their animals , setting farmers in competition with each other for production speeds and efficiency .
The way you win that competition is to pack more animals into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ antibiotics so they don ’ t die from infections that flourish amid overcrowding , raise breeds that live lives of pain but grow with astonishing speed , create massive manure lagoons that poison streams and turn air acrid .
The result is a brutal incentive to mechanize the process of livestock production in ways cruel to the animals , the farmers , and their communities .
“ Independent family farmers and ranchers are being driven off their land , driven into bankruptcy , being forced into a system of industrialized agriculture that our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says Joe Maxwell , a Missouri farmer , former lieutenant governor , and co-founder of the Family Farm Action Alliance .
“ It ’ s either join up with these transnational monopolies or we ’ re going to bankrupt you .
That ’ s the reality of family agriculture today.
” Booker realized that , as unlikely as it sounds , there was a space in the Venn diagram between the people who believe raising and killing animals for food is wrong and the people whose chose , as their livelihoods , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Both could agree that the way we are doing it now is cruel , both to animals and to people .
“ This is not how we raised livestock 70 years ago , ” Booker says .
“ We ’ ve gone from raising animals in a far more humane , pasture-based model to one where we ’ re producing food in hyper-confined , concentrated , enclosed buildings that produce these massive lagoons of waste that are poisoning our streams and our rivers.
” In December of 2019 , while campaigning in Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Act .
It ’ s sweeping legislation , but at its core it does four things : • Imposes an immediate moratorium on the construction of new CAFOs and phases out the largest existing CAFOs by 2040 • Imposes the liabilities and costs of pollutions , accidents , and disasters on the agricultural conglomerates that control the market rather than on the independent farmers who contract with them • Creates a $ 100 billion fund to help farmers who are currently running CAFOs transition to other agricultural operations • Strengthens the existing Packers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of contract terms and structures that let huge meat buyers put farmers in a race for the bottom while denying them political and legal recourse Booker dropped out of the presidential race in January .
But his legislation kept picking up cosponsors .
In May of 2020 , Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( D-MA ) signed on to the bill .
That same month , Rep. Ro Khanna ( D-CA ) , who co-chaired Bernie Sanders ’ s presidential campaign , sponsored a companion bill in the House with six cosponsors , including Rep. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the House Progressive Caucus .
“ For years and years , giant multinational corporations have been crushing competition in the agricultural sector and seizing key markets while regulators have looked the other way , ” Warren says .
“ The Covid-19 crisis is making it even easier for Big Ag to get even bigger and gobble up small farms — leaving farmers out in the cold and consumers facing higher costs and fewer choices.
” “ My interest in it came because I was spending time with Bernie Sanders in Iowa , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these factory farms and I saw miles and miles of land where you couldn ’ t see farmers .
All you could see was machinery and runoff .
And when I spoke to actual farmers , they talked about how the people who owned these farms weren ’ t in Iowa .
They had no control over the environmental impact .
They felt they didn ’ t have control over their own economic destiny.
” There is a coalition emerging here , one that could lead to overdue reforms in our food system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things to say about our politics .
The politics of animal — and human — suffering David Coman-Hidy is the president of the Humane League , an animal welfare organization .
In May , I had a conversation with him I ’ ve had trouble getting out of my head .
My question was innocuous .
I wanted to know what he was working on .
“ Switching from live shackling to the atmospheric killing of chickens , ” he replied .
I wasn ’ t familiar with these terms , and maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And I ’ m sorry for what I ’ m going to force you to imagine as I explain them .
“ The process of how we slaughter broiler chickens is the cruelest thing imaginable , ” says Coman-Hidy .
These are , functionally , malnourished , young birds .
Workers flip them upside down to shackle them by their legs .
In many cases , the process dislocates their hips .
Chickens aren ’ t meant to be upside-down .
They have no diaphragm .
Shackled and inverted , their organs crush @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the birds to breathe .
The point of the shackling is to put them on a conveyor that drags them through electrified water , stunning them before the kill .
But the birds panic , thrashing in wild terror .
Some of them miss the water , or the stun setting is too low .
Those birds have their throats cut while they ’ re still conscious , and then they ’ re pulled through boiling water to defeather them .
If the blade misses the bird , the bird boils alive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to convince agricultural producers to slaughter chickens by simply gassing them , en masse .
It ’ s easier on the chickens , and less traumatizing for the workers .
And the campaign is seeing some success .
McDonald ’ s has pledged to move to atmospheric killing , for one .
Coman-Hidy is a vegan , he ’ s devoted his life to reducing animal suffering .
Didn ’ t it feel strange , I asked him , to become part of this machine whose very existence he loathes ?
Even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t it unnerve him to become one of the people shaping the architecture of animal slaughter ?
“ The thought experiment that helped me is if I could die , or have a member of my family die , by being euthanized by gas , or have what I just described happen to them , what would I give to get the gas ?
” He replied .
“ And the answer is everything.
” There are few movements as alienated from the consensus position as the animal suffering movement .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of billions of animals being tortured and slaughtered in ways that poison the earth , warm the planet , and — as we are seeing with particular clarity now , as scores die daily from a pandemic virus that began in a meat market — harm human health .
The practices of industrial animal agriculture are so cruel that you can ’ t describe them in polite company , so traumatizing that suicide and abuse are too-common worker hazards , so disturbing that agriculture companies pass laws criminalizing efforts to show the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a structure of suffering with no bottom , no end , and what is most astonishing about it is that almost everyone simply treats it as normal .
And so the animal suffering movement has to practice , in the truest and most challenging sense of the word , politics .
They have to find common purpose with those they disagree with profoundly .
To have any chance of changing a system they loathe , they must become part of it , even complicit in it .
They don ’ t get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for a world they could be comfortable in , for an end to the horror they see all around them .
They get to hope chickens will die from gas rather than shackled upside down with their throats cut .
And they are finding that the best way to get to that world is to focus on human suffering , too .
Coronavirus has created coalitions that didn ’ t exist before it by laying bare the close connection between animal and human suffering .
Meatpacking plants have been epicenters of outbreaks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laborers who then transmit the virus to their communities .
The League of United Latin American Citizens called for “ meatless May Mondays ” to protest conditions in the slaughterhouses .
“ Until the meat industry , federal and state governments protect the lives of essential workers at all meat processing facilities in a federally mandated and verifiable manner , LULAC will call for boycotts of meat products , ” the organization ’ s president , Domingo Garcia , said in a statement .
It ’ s in the intersection of human and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sees opportunity .
Farmers and vegan activists may not agree on the world they want to see , but they can agree that the way both farmer and animals were treated in the past is preferable to the way they are treated today .
LULAC and the Humane League aren ’ t pursuing the same long-term goals , but better conditions for workers would also mean better conditions for animals .
How much change would the Farm System Reform Act bring ?
In reporting for this piece , I ’ ve asked everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ System Reform Act passed , how much would really change ?
“ It doesn ’ t ban animal agriculture , ” says Leah Garcés , the president of Mercy for Animals .
“ If you look for the part of the bill banning cages and crates , it ’ s not in there .
But it would end animal agriculture as we know it .
It wouldn ’ t let the system go forward as it does.
” To Garcés , the key element of the bill is the reversal of liability .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ chicken farmers who ’ ve been driven by contract terms and debt loads to accept practices that repulse them , and who find themselves paying the bill when disease cuts through their flock , or pollution gushes into the waterways that feed the community .
“ Currently integrators ” — that ’ s your Tysons and Smithfields — “ have created a system where all the bad parts of animal farming are on the back of the farmer or taxpayer , ” Garcés says .
“ The bill flips that : ‘ Integrator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pollution.
’ I think that would bankrupt the current system if they had to pay for it.
” In her work with farmers , Garcés has found many of them want to escape the industrial animal agriculture business , either because they appalled by how they have to treat their animals , their land , or both .
But the integrators load them up with so much debt that they have no way out but through .
So the debt forgiveness and transition assistance thrills her .
“ The biggest hurdle to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” she says .
“ I think hundreds of farmers would sign up for this .
They just need a bridge.
” Maxwell , of the Family Farm Action Alliance , agrees .
“ Most of these farmers are just cogs in a big machine , ” he says .
“ Once they borrow money from one of these big companies , they get stuck on a treadmill of poverty and debt that they can ’ t get off of .
That ’ s why 70 percent of us live at or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many farmers are looking for ways off that treadmill , and that ’ s what this bill offers.
” There are two wild cards here .
One is the rapid rise of plant and lab-based meats .
By 2040 , when the Farm System Reform Act is fully implemented , how rapidly have those technologies advanced ?
How cheap is an Impossible Burger ?
How tasty is lab-grown pork , or 3D-printed steak ?
Animal meat is so cheap in part because the true costs are hidden — they are absorbed by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pollution flowing into communities , the quiet traumas and injuries carried by workers .
If a bill like this made animal-based meat more expensive , it might accelerate the transition to other forms of meat .
That ’ s certainly a quiet hope in the animal rights crowd .
Animal meat is so cheap in part because the true costs are hidden — they are absorbed by the suffering of the animals , the unpriced pollution flowing into communities , the quiet traumas and injuries carried by workers The danger , though , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overseas or Latin America , where standards are lower and even crueler , more dangerous practices prevail .
The bill establishes country-of-origin labeling , but there ’ s little reason to believe that would be much of a hurdle — Americans already buy strawberries from Mexico and steak from Brazil .
The question is what Americans really want , and how easy it will be for them to get it .
There is a deep ambivalence in our relationship to the food that ends up on our plates : We want food from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are treated well , where the land is respected , and we want it all to be incredibly cheap and absurdly plentiful .
The average American consumed 222 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2018 , according to the USDA .
Right now , big agribusiness producers try to ease consumer consciences through misdirection : Their packaging and advertising emphasize small farms , their ag-gag laws and contract provisions choke off the flow of actual information , the massive scale and mechanization of their processes hold down prices , and their political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tilt in America in the last 30 years of policy has been towards consumerism , ” Khanna says .
“ We will do everything possible to lower prices .
We won ’ t care about jobs , real wages , or the environment .
My argument is that we ought to care enough about farmers have a decent livelihood , about environmental consequences , about consequences to communities , so even if this means there ’ s a slight increase in the price of meat , that ’ s worth it.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end all the abuses of factory farming , all the environmental degradation it causes , all the economic exploitation faced by farmers .
But it ’ s a start .
And if the odd-bedfellows coalition Booker is trying to build materializes , and finds real political footing , profound change is possible .
“ We can ’ t vilify each other , ” Booker says .
“ If we can ’ t have compassion for people in these broken systems , then we ’ re not going to have the compassion or coalitions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

About a year before Sen. Cory Booker officially ran for president, he took a trip through the Midwest, meeting voters in the states he knew he’d need to win. One visit, in particular, sticks in his mind. It was in the home of a Republican farmer, a man who told Booker’s team he wasn’t sure he wanted to host the senator because “this is a Christian household.” Booker is Christian, but he knew what that meant: He’s vegan, liberal, an African American Democrat from Newark, New Jersey. Booker wasn’t the kind of politician this farmer saw as his own.
Booker tried to loosen the guy up with dad jokes. “I told him his cows were udderly amazing,” Booker recalls. Nothing.
The breakthrough came when the farmer began telling Booker about “the hell” he and his neighbors found themselves in. They used to sell their cows to five different companies, which meant if a buyer didn’t give them a good price or demanded practices that compromised their cows or land, they could go to another. But the industry had consolidated. Now there was one buyer, and that buyer controlled everything. The farmers had been reduced from entrepreneurs to serfs. Here, finally, was common ground. The farmer hated what his business had become, and so did Booker.
This was a story Booker heard again and again. And it carried the seed of an idea. Booker is vegan, and so he knows, better than most, how unpopular veganism is — in one survey, only people with drug addiction were viewed more negatively. Asked during a September CNN town hall whether he thought others should become vegan, Booker said “no,” before pivoting to discuss the problems of factory farming. In an MSNBC interview, he laughed off the idea of a “radical vegan agenda,” reassuring voters he doesn’t think “government should be telling Americans what to eat.”
But Booker realized there was a place that vegans and farmers could come together: Both of them hate the ways agribusiness had consolidated and mechanized the meat market, forcing farmers into using massive, cruel, and environmentally devastating confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
The agricultural industry has an unusual structure: Virtually every node in the industry is highly concentrated around a few megaproducers. That’s true for seeds, for pesticides, for machines, for production. And concentration has been increasing, and fast. In 1980, 34 percent of pigs were slaughtered by the four largest meatpacking companies. By 2015, that had nearly doubled, to 66 percent.
But the food is still grown, and the animals still raised, on family farms. These farms are, in theory, independent, but in practice, they bear the risks of independence without the expected freedoms. The megaproducers they buy from and sell to have all the leverage; farmers are left with little choice save to accept the onerous, binding contracts they’re offered. As the Center for American Progress puts it, “growing corporate power has left relatively small farms and ranches vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of the oligopolies with which they do business.”
The results, for farmers, have been disastrous. In 2018, median farm income was negative $1,840 — meaning most farms lost money. Farmers saw a 50 percent drop in income since 2013. Adjusted for inflation, farm incomes have been stagnant for the past 30 years. As a result, farmers are buried in debt: The sector’s debt-to-income ratio is the highest it’s been since the farm crisis of the mid-’80s. (The National Pork Producers Council declined to comment for this story, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association did not reply to a request for comment.)
As farmers have lost control of their livelihoods, they’ve also lost control of their animals, their crops, and their land. They have no choice but to contract with companies that dictate the way they raise their animals, setting farmers in competition with one another for production speeds and efficiency. The way you win that competition is to pack more animals into your sheds, pump them fuller of antibiotics so they don’t die from infections that flourish amid overcrowding, raise breeds that live lives of pain but grow with astonishing speed, create massive manure lagoons that poison streams and turn air acrid. The result is a brutal incentive to mechanize the process of livestock production in ways cruel to the animals, the farmers, and their communities.
“Independent family farmers and ranchers are being driven off their land, driven into bankruptcy, being forced into a system of industrialized agriculture that our values don’t support,” says Joe Maxwell, a Missouri farmer, former lieutenant governor, and co-founder of the Family Farm Action Alliance. “It’s either join up with these transnational monopolies or we’re going to bankrupt you. That’s the reality of family agriculture today.”
Booker realized that, as unlikely as it sounds, there was a space in the Venn diagram between the people who believe raising and killing animals for food is wrong and the people whose chose, as their livelihoods, to raise and kill animals for food. Both could agree that the way we are doing it now is cruel, both to animals and to people.
“This is not how we raised livestock 70 years ago,” Booker says. “We’ve gone from raising animals in a far more humane, pasture-based model to one where we’re producing food in hyper-confined, concentrated, enclosed buildings that produce these massive lagoons of waste that are poisoning our streams and our rivers.”
In December of 2019, while campaigning in Iowa, Booker unveiled the Farm System Reform Act. It’s sweeping legislation, but at its core it does four things:
Imposes an immediate moratorium on the construction of new CAFOs and phases out the largest existing CAFOs by 2040
Imposes the liabilities and costs of pollutions, accidents, and disasters on the agricultural conglomerates that control the market rather than on the independent farmers who contract with them
Creates a $100 billion fund to help farmers who are currently running CAFOs transition to other agricultural operations
Strengthens the existing Packers and Stockyards Act to prohibit a range of contract terms and structures that let huge meat buyers put farmers in a race for the bottom while denying them political and legal recourse
Booker dropped out of the presidential race in January. But his legislation kept picking up cosponsors. In May of 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) signed on to the bill. That same month, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, sponsored a companion bill in the House with six co-sponsors, including Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus.
“For years and years, giant multinational corporations have been crushing competition in the agricultural sector and seizing key markets while regulators have looked the other way,” Warren says. “The Covid-19 crisis is making it even easier for Big Ag to get even bigger and gobble up small farms — leaving farmers out in the cold and consumers facing higher costs and fewer choices.”
“My interest in it came because I was spending time with Bernie Sanders in Iowa,” Khanna says. “I saw these factory farms, and I saw miles and miles of land where you couldn’t see farmers. All you could see was machinery and runoff. And when I spoke to actual farmers, they talked about how the people who owned these farms weren’t in Iowa. They had no control over the environmental impact. They felt they didn’t have control over their own economic destiny.”
There is a coalition emerging here, one that could lead to overdue reforms in our food system, but one that also has profound things to say about our politics.
The politics of animal — and human — suffering
David Coman-Hidy is the president of the Humane League, an animal welfare organization. In May, I had a conversation with him I’ve had trouble getting out of my head. My question was innocuous. I wanted to know what he was working on. “Switching from live shackling to the atmospheric killing of chickens,” he replied.
Oh.
I wasn’t familiar with these terms, and maybe you aren’t, either. And I’m sorry for what I’m going to force you to imagine as I explain them. “The process of how we slaughter broiler chickens is the cruelest thing imaginable,” says Coman-Hidy. These are, functionally, malnourished, young birds. Workers flip them upside down to shackle them by their legs. In many cases, the process dislocates their hips.
Chickens aren’t meant to be upside-down. They have no diaphragm. Shackled and inverted, their organs crush into their lungs, making it hard for the birds to breathe. The point of the shackling is to put them on a conveyor that drags them through electrified water, stunning them before the kill. But the birds panic, thrashing in wild terror. Some of them miss the water, or the stun setting is too low. Those birds have their throats cut while they’re still conscious, and then they’re pulled through boiling water to defeather them. If the blade misses the bird, the bird boils alive.
Coman-Hidy and his organization are working to convince agricultural producers to slaughter chickens by simply gassing them, en masse. It’s easier on the chickens, and less traumatizing for the workers. And the campaign is seeing some success. McDonald’s has pledged to move to atmospheric killing, for one.
Coman-Hidy is vegan; he’s devoted his life to reducing animal suffering. Didn’t it feel strange, I asked him, to become part of this machine whose very existence he loathes? Even if atmospheric killing was more humane, wouldn’t it unnerve him to become one of the people shaping the architecture of animal slaughter?
“The thought experiment that helped me is if I could die, or have a member of my family die, by being euthanized by gas, or have what I just described happen to them, what would I give to get the gas?” He replied. “And the answer is everything.”
There are few movements as alienated from the consensus position as the animal suffering movement. They look at the world and see tens of billions of animals being tortured and slaughtered in ways that poison the earth, warm the planet, and — as we are seeing with particular clarity now, as scores die daily from a pandemic virus that likely began in a meat market — harm human health. The practices of industrial animal agriculture are so cruel that you can’t describe them in polite company, so traumatizing that suicide and abuse are too-common worker hazards, so disturbing that agriculture companies pass laws criminalizing efforts to show the world where their meals are made. It is a structure of suffering with no bottom, no end, and what is most astonishing about it is that almost everyone simply treats it as normal.
And so the animal suffering movement has to practice, in the truest and most challenging sense of the word, politics. They have to find common purpose with those they disagree with profoundly. To have any chance of changing a system they loathe, they must become part of it, even complicit in it. They don’t get to realistically hope for success anytime soon, for a world they could be comfortable in, for an end to the horror they see all around them. They get to hope chickens will die from gas rather than shackled upside down with their throats cut. And they are finding that the best way to get to that world is to focus on human suffering, too.
The coronavirus has created coalitions that didn’t exist before it by laying bare the close connection between animal and human suffering. Meatpacking plants have been epicenters of outbreaks, with the suffering concentrated among immigrant laborers who then transmit the virus to their communities. The League of United Latin American Citizens called for “meatless May Mondays” to protest conditions in the slaughterhouses.
“Until the meat industry, federal and state governments protect the lives of essential workers at all meat processing facilities in a federally mandated and verifiable manner, LULAC will call for boycotts of meat products,” the organization’s president, Domingo Garcia, said in a statement.
It’s in the intersection of human and animal suffering that the animal rights community sees opportunity. Farmers and vegan activists may not agree on the world they want to see, but they can agree that the way both farmer and animals were treated in the past is preferable to the way they are treated today. LULAC and the Humane League aren’t pursuing the same long-term goals, but better conditions for workers would also mean better conditions for animals.
How much change would the Farm System Reform Act bring?
In reporting for this piece, I’ve asked everyone the same question: If the Farm System Reform Act passed, how much would really change?
“It doesn’t ban animal agriculture,” says Leah Garcés, the president of Mercy for Animals. “If you look for the part of the bill banning cages and crates, it’s not in there. But it would end animal agriculture as we know it. It wouldn’t let the system go forward as it does.”
To Garcés, the key element of the bill is the reversal of liability. She’s spent years working with chicken farmers who’ve been driven by contract terms and debt loads to accept practices that repulse them, and who find themselves paying the bill when disease cuts through their flock, or pollution gushes into the waterways that feed the community.
“Currently, integrators” — that’s your Tysons and Smithfields — “have created a system where all the bad parts of animal farming are on the back of the farmer or taxpayer,” Garcés says. “The bill flips that: ‘Integrator, you need to pay for all the pollution.’ I think that would bankrupt the current system if they had to pay for it.”
In her work with farmers, Garcés has found many of them want to escape the industrial animal agriculture business, because they appalled by how they have to treat their animals, their land, or both. But the integrators load them up with so much debt that they have no way out but through. So the debt forgiveness and transition assistance thrills her. “The biggest hurdle to getting farmers to transition is the debt,” she says. “I think hundreds of farmers would sign up for this. They just need a bridge.”
Maxwell, of the Family Farm Action Alliance, agrees. “Most of these farmers are just cogs in a big machine,” he says. “Once they borrow money from one of these big companies, they get stuck on a treadmill of poverty and debt that they can’t get off of. That’s why 70 percent of us live at or below the federal poverty level. So many farmers are looking for ways off that treadmill, and that’s what this bill offers.”
There are two wild cards here. One is the rapid rise of plant- and lab-based meats. By 2040, when the Farm System Reform Act is fully implemented, how rapidly have those technologies advanced? How cheap is an Impossible Burger? How tasty is lab-grown pork, or 3D-printed steak? Animal meat is so cheap in part because the true costs are hidden — they are absorbed by the suffering of the animals, the unpriced pollution flowing into communities, the quiet traumas and injuries carried by workers. If a bill like this made animal-based meat more expensive, it might accelerate the transition to other forms of meat. That’s certainly a quiet hope in the animal rights crowd.
Animal meat is so cheap in part because the true costs are hidden — they are absorbed by the suffering of the animals, the unpriced pollution flowing into communities, the quiet traumas and injuries carried by workers
The danger, though, is that the bill could drive production overseas or to Latin America, where standards are lower and even crueler, more dangerous practices prevail. The bill establishes country-of-origin labeling, but there’s little reason to believe that would be much of a hurdle — Americans already buy strawberries from Mexico and steak from Brazil.
The question is what Americans really want, and how easy it will be for them to get it. There is a deep ambivalence in our relationship to the food that ends up on our plates: We want food from small farms, where workers and animals are treated well, where the land is respected, and we want it all to be incredibly cheap and absurdly plentiful.
The average American consumed 222 pounds of red meat and poultry in 2018, according to the USDA. Right now, big agribusiness producers try to ease consumer consciences through misdirection: Their packaging and advertising emphasize small farms, their ag-gag laws and contract provisions choke off the flow of actual information, the massive scale and mechanization of their processes hold down prices, and their political contributions repel real oversight.
“The tilt in America in the last 30 years of policy has been toward consumerism,” Khanna says. “We will do everything possible to lower prices. We won’t care about jobs, real wages, or the environment. My argument is that we ought to care enough about farmers [having] a decent livelihood, about environmental consequences, about consequences to communities, so even if this means there’s a slight increase in the price of meat, that’s worth it.”
The Farm System Reform Act won’t end all the abuses of factory farming, all the environmental degradation it causes, all the economic exploitation faced by farmers. But it’s a start. And if the odd-bedfellows coalition Booker is trying to build materializes, and finds real political footing, profound change is possible.
“We can’t vilify each other,” Booker says. “If we can’t have compassion for people in these broken systems, then we’re not going to have the compassion or coalitions to end these systems themselves.”
Roge Karma contributed reporting.