Food on Fire
With all of the current crises both domestic and international, a looming fertilizer and food-storage shortage has so far failed to captivate the American public as much as the war in Ukraine, the lockdowns in China, or the court saga of Amber and Johnny. Yet America’s harvest this year is already threatened by an acute fertilizer shortage and crippling fuel prices. Moreover, in one of the stranger stories emerging from an already surreal political landscape, a lot of American food-processing facilities lately have been going up in smoke — literally.
Back in April, a few in the mainstream media began noticing a startling trend: Food-processing facilities all across America have been catching fire over the past several months, a trend that has included several eye-catching episodes such as small plane crashes and massive explosions. No less an eminence than Fox News’ Tucker Carlson took note of the odd string of “coincidences,” which others in the media establishment have been quick to dismiss as random occurrences. The National Review, ever the bastion of “reasonable” conservativism, for example, noted quite reasonably that “none of the fires have so far been declared cases of arson…. [Morever,] if you were a terrorist or foreign agent attempting to choke off the American food-distribution network ... would you start with an obscure potato-chip maker in Oregon? Then move on to the source of Hot Pockets in Arkansas? Then move on to a soybean-processing tank in Virginia? Are these the right targets if you’re trying to cripple America?”
Fair enough. But on the other hand, some of the fires have indeed struck significant facilities — for example, the massive fire that destroyed much of Wisconsin River Meats in Mauston, Wisconsin, on February 5, or the November 21 fire that left the Maid-Rite Steak Company meat processing plant in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, inoperable. Of the claimed total of 18 fires at food-processing facilities over the past six months, the following would appear to be potentially significant, in addition to the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania events already mentioned:
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