Food Processing Plants Fires Conspiracy Theory

Submission 9,708

Part of a series on Conspiracy Theories. [View Related Entries]

About

Food Processing Plants Fires Conspiracy Theory is a conspiracy claiming that the streak of fires at food processing facilities that started in September 2021 is not a coincidence but rather a deliberate plot to cause food shortage in the United States. The theory found a reflection in memes spread across social media starting in late April 2022 going into the following months.

Origin

On April 19th, 2022, Twitter^[1] user @julieanngirly tweeted about a fire that destroyed the headquarters of Azure Standard^[2] located in Dufur, Oregon, which happened less than a week after a fire destroyed a Taylor Farms facility in Salinas, California on April 14th.^[3] The tweet (shown below, left) gained over 240 retweets and 340 likes in roughly two months.

On April 20th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @GraduatedBen tweeted, "Several very large food processing plants in the US have blown up/burned down in the past few days," linking a February article about an explosion that destroyed a Shearer's Foods facility in Hermiston, Oregon.^[5] The tweet (shown below, center) gained over 10,300 retweets and 14,600 likes in two months. On the same day, Twitter^[6] user @DylanRMarshall replied with a collage of 18 headlines about fires at food processing plants and other facilities dating between September 2021 and April 2022 (shown below, right).

Spread

On April 21st, 2022, Twitter^[7] user @WallStreetSilv tweeted the collage, writing, "18 U.S. food processing facilities burned down in the last six months. Azure Standard's HQ burned down yesterday." The tweet gained over 11,500 retweets and 21,700 likes prior to being deleted.

Later on that same day, Twitter^[8]^[9] users @cbcool2532 and @jasonrantz both posted a clip of Fox News covering a story of a small plane crashing into a parking lot of a General Mills plane. The April 21st report explicitly stated that the plane crashed into the factory rather than a parking lot, and recounted several recent industrial incidents at food processing plants. The clips gained over 560,000 views and 139,000 views in two months, respectively (@cbcool2532's upload shown below). Twitter^[10] user @maga935 tweeted about the crash later that day, writing, "food processors being destroyed everywhere," with the tweet gaining over 5,100 retweets and 13,300 likes in a similar timeframe.

Also on April 21st, The Free Thought Project^[11] and Timcast^[12] posted articles about fires at food processing plants, with Timcast recounting "at least 16 fires at food processing plants" since a fire closed a Tyson Foods meat processing plant in Kansas in 2019.

On April 22nd, Facebook^[13] page The Bad Roman posted the earliest found meme referencing the conspiracy, which implied that the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial was a distraction, using a Bending Streetlight meme that gained over 190 reactions and 22,000 shares in two months (shown below, left). On April 24th, Twitter^[14] user @OrwellNGoode reposted the image, with the post gaining over 14,500 retweets and 145,600 likes in a similar timeframe. On April 26th, the Instagram^[15] page thelibertarianhomeschooler posted a similar object-labeling meme that gained over 4,800 likes in a month and a half (authorship unconfirmed; shown below, right). On April 27th, @OrwellNGoode made a repost^[16] that gained over 1,800 retweets and 19,200 likes in a similar amount of time.

On April 25th and 27th, fact-checking organizations Snopes^[17] and Logically^[18] reviewed the conspiracy theory, with both rating it as false, and Logically describing it as a part of the larger Great Reset conspiracy.

In June 2022, the conspiracy theory received a significant surge in virality after on May 28th, 2022, a fire destroyed a Forsman Farms' barn that housed tens of thousands of chickens.^[19] In the days following the report, an increased number of posts and memes about the conspiracy were posted on Twitter,^[20] iFunny,^[21] 4chan^[22] and other sites. For example, on June 4th, Twitter user @BeeMatney made a tweet claiming that the facility was "mysteriously torched" and that it was the 19th time that happened in 2022.