纽约时报 疫情下的屠宰场 食品链最薄弱的环节(1)（在线收听）

The Food Chain's Weakest Link: Slaughterhouses

食品链最薄弱的环节——屠宰场

The modern American slaughterhouse is a very different place from the one that Upton Sinclair depicted in his early-20th-century novel, "The Jungle."

美国当代的屠宰场早已不是20世纪初厄普顿·辛克莱在小说《丛林》中描绘的模样。

Many are giant, sleek refrigerated assembly lines,

如今，很多屠宰场都变成了巨大而光滑的冷藏装配线，

staffed mostly by unionized workers who slice, debone and "gut snatch" hog and beef carcasses, under constant oversight of government inspectors.

雇佣的大多都是工会的工人，由他们负责将杀好的猪或者牛切片，去骨，“去内脏”，还要经常接受政府有关工作人员的检查和监督。

The jobs are often grueling and sometimes dangerous,

屠宰场的工作大多都极其辛苦，有时还很危险，

but pork and beef producers boast about having some of the most heavily sanitized work spaces of any industry.

猪肉和牛肉生产商却总是吹嘘说，他们行业几乎是所有行业中消毒工作做得最严格的行业。

Yet meat plants, honed over decades for maximum efficiency and profit,

然而，数十年来一直渴望实现最大效率和利润的肉类加工场

have become major "hot spots" for the coronavirus pandemic,

最近却成了新冠病毒爆发的“热点区域”——

with some reporting widespread illnesses among their workers.

一些加工厂报告称，他们的员工出现了大面积感染的现象。

The health crisis has revealed how these plants are becoming the weakest link in the nation's food supply chain,

揭示这些加工厂为何变成了这个国家食品供应链中最薄弱的环节，

posing a serious challenge to meat production.

给肉类生产带来严峻挑战的恰好就是它们的卫生危机。

After decades of consolidation, there are about 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States,

经过数十年的整合，美国现在大约共有800个处于联邦监督之下的屠宰场，

processing billions of pounds of meat for food stores each year.

这些屠宰场每年为食品店加工的肉类重达数十亿磅。

But a relatively small number of them account for the vast majority of production.

问题是，这块蛋糕绝大部分都掌握在了个别加工厂手里。

In the cattle industry, a little more than 50 plants are responsible for as much as 98 percent of slaughtering and processing in the United States,

就拿牛肉屠宰行业来说，足足有98%的牛肉屠宰和加工份额落在50出头家加工厂头上，

according to Cassandra Fish, a beef analyst.

据牛肉分析师卡桑德拉·菲什透露。

Shutting down one plant, even for a few weeks, is like closing an airport hub.

让他们中间的任何一家歇业——哪怕只是歇业几个星期——的严重性都不亚于关闭一个机场枢纽的严重性。

It backs up hog and beef production across the country,

全国各地的生猪和牛肉生产都会受到影响，

crushes prices paid to farmers and eventually leads to months of meat shortages.

支付给养殖户的肉价也会缩水，最终还会引发连续数月的肉类短缺问题。

"Slaughterhouses are a critical bottleneck in the system,"

“屠宰场算是整个供应系统比较关键的一个瓶颈吧，”

said Julie Niederhoff, an associate professor of supply chain management at Syracuse University.

锡拉丘兹大学供应链管理副教授朱莉·尼德霍夫说道。

"When they go down, we are in trouble."

“他们一旦倒下，我们就麻烦了。”

The ripple effects of the virus are now being felt across the entire meat supply chain, all the way to grocery store freezers.

如今，整个肉类供应链，小至超市的冷柜都感受到了新冠病毒引发的连锁反应。

More than a dozen beef, pork and chicken processing plants have closed or are running at greatly reduced speeds because of the pandemic.

大流行爆发后，已经有十几家牛肉、猪肉和鸡肉加工厂关闭或低速运营。

This past week, the number of cattle slaughtered dropped nearly 22 percent from the same period a year ago,

农业部的数据显示，过去一周，肉牛屠宰量比去年同期下降了近22%，

while hog slaughter was down 6 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture.

生猪屠宰量也下降了6%。