GuelphToday received the following letter to the editor from a group of concerned citizens who believe that the Cargill plant should stay closed while COVID cases are so high:
With well over a hundred cases of Covid-19, Cargill plans to reopen next week, and continue to put our community at risk. ]
Nearly a thousand people associated with Cargill in High River developed covid-19, and three died, in the largest outbreak in Canada.
There's a class action suit against the company ... but one year's revenue is well over a hundred billion dollars. The Cargill family has more billionaires than any other in the world. So the lives of their workers, many of them new immigrants with few choices, and the lives of the people in communities like Guelph, High River, Calgary, and Chambly are expendable. Because money's involved.
Why does the government allow this corporation to put communities at risk?
Please don't say Cargill is feeding the world, or is an essential service. Meat is a net SINK of food … and of protein, since most of the soy on the planet is fed to farmed animals. Animals killed for food eat food, drink water, and create excrement and GHG emissions for months or years before becoming food. Meat and slaughterhouses are luxuries we cannot afford as a species or a community.
Cargill needs to stay closed. Our governments need to stop subsidizing and ALLOWING billionaire corporations to kill the planet and put human lives at risk, and start transitioning to a sustainable food system that will bring us in line with the Canada Food Guide and our commitment to the Paris Agreement.
Mo Markham, Kitchener
Patty Cuthbert, Guelph
Les Doherty, Guelph Andrea Baker, Guelph-Eramosa
