FACT FOCUS: Food plant fires fuel conspiracy theory

The fireplace at a Perdue Farms soybean facility in Virginia on Saturday was fairly modest. Firefighters had it beneath handle about an hour right after arriving and the plant continues to be thoroughly operational.

“It was an accidental fire,” reported Capt. Steven Bradley, a spokesperson for the Chesapeake Fire Division, attributing it to an equipment malfunction. “Nothing suspicious.”

Consider telling that to the internet, in which the incident grew to become the most recent fodder for an unfounded and growing conspiracy theory alleging that fires at different U.S. foods processing vegetation and other facilities are component of a deliberate effort to undermine the foods source.

The baseless narrative has unfold widely as Russia’s war on Ukraine has disrupted the world food stuff supply, driving up prices for commodities these types of as grains and vegetable oils and threatening foodstuff safety in some pieces of the environment.

Here is a appear at the facts.

Declare: Suspicious fires at foodstuff processing plants in the U.S. are staying made use of to generate meals shortages.

THE Details: Broadly shared social media posts in new months have showcased lists, maps and headline montages about this kind of fires to advise a nefarious plot is at enjoy — even although fireplace officers in many of the circumstances say the blazes had been mishaps, not the do the job of arsonists.

Chatter about food processing plant fires substantially amplified in April, when compared with March, in accordance to an evaluation of social media, standard media and other channels by media intelligence agency Zignal Labs on behalf of The Involved Press.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson highlighted the principle in an April 21 phase in which his guest, radio host Jason Rantz, called the incidents “obviously suspicious,” including that “you’ve received some people speculating that this may well be an intentional way to disrupt the foodstuff source.”

The segment began with the news of a plane crash close to a General Mills facility in Covington, Ga. A spokesperson for the firm told the AP, nonetheless, that the plant, which manufactures cereal and snacks, “did not encounter any disruptions and it remains absolutely operational.”

Requested for comment, Fox News pointed to a report on Carlson’s demonstrate quite a few times later in which a reporter mentioned that “we have discovered no evidence that these incidents are either intentional or connected” but proposed incidents have been much more regular this yr than in the previous. It really is unclear what criteria the report used when compiling its numbers.

The AP contacted officers in relation to 23 exclusive occasions, eight from 2021 and the relaxation from this 12 months, that have been referenced involving two lists shared on Facebook and Twitter. Fire officers in 9 circumstances mentioned that the fires had been decided or suspected to be accidental. In several others, officers would only say that the fires had been however under investigation. In some other circumstances, area information experiences also advised the incidents ended up mishaps.

On Monday, the National Fire Defense Affiliation pushed back on the rumors in a story in its journal titled “Nothing to See Listed here.”

Susan McKelvey, an NFPA spokesperson, pointed out in an e mail that countrywide details demonstrate the state averaged additional than 5,000 fires every year at manufacturing and processing amenities, not just meals plants, in between 2015 and 2019. She approximated that there have “been about 20 fires in U.S. foodstuff processing amenities in the very first 4 months of 2022, which is not intense at all and does not sign something out of the everyday.”

“The recent inquiries about these fires appears to be a case of people today abruptly spending notice to them and being surprised about how normally they do come about,” McKelvey reported.

Lisa Fazio, an associate professor of psychology and human enhancement at Vanderbilt University, explained most Americans wouldn’t know the frequency of these industrial accidents — which “means that it’s fairly quick to create a worry in excess of the difficulty.”

With genuine food stuff shortages brought on by the war, “everything they listen to gets filtered by that lens and persons get started noticing matters that they hadn’t paid out focus to just before,” Fazio stated in an e mail.

Food stuff market specialists really don’t watch the accidents as a disaster for Americans, both.

“There does not seem to be any proof connecting these fires in any way, and there is totally no threat to the US meals supply simply because of a sequence of unrelated, unfortunate accidents,” Sam Gazdziak, a spokesperson for the American Association of Meat Processors, stated in an e-mail.

People who abide by the food stuff supply chain say even though these types of fires can of program have an impact, they are not a big issue domestically or globally.

“The fires were certainly not at the prime of my checklist,” reported Phillip Coles, a professor of observe in supply chain management at Lehigh University.

Coles said labor shortages domestically and world-wide troubles these types of as the Russian war in Ukraine, lockdowns in China and shipping and delivery expenses, are larger sized factors. He said while shoppers in U.S. could possibly not see specified products obtainable, the situation isn’t really a lack of food stuff altogether.

David Ortega, a food economist and affiliate professor at Michigan State University, claimed it was “extremely unlikely” that the U.S. would experience food shortages from the Russia-Ukraine war.

Whilst Russia and Ukraine are key grain suppliers, the U.S. creates enough domestically and is just not dependent on the region, Ortega claimed. Instead, he claimed, foodstuff shortages from the war would be felt in countries that rely intensely on the location for foods imports, this sort of as places in North Africa and the Center East.

He added: “Beliefs that the U.S. will shortly be very low on foods are simply unfounded.” ___

Related Press writers Josh Kelety in Phoenix and Ali Swenson in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

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This is portion of AP’s work to handle commonly shared misinformation, together with perform with outside the house corporations and businesses to incorporate factual context to deceptive information that is circulating on the net. Learn far more about actuality-examining at AP.