Photo: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images For many Americans, meat is a way of life. Breakfast may mean bacon and sausage. Turkey sandwiches or chicken-topped salads at lunch. Dinner might mean more chicken, grilled pork tenderloin, meatloaf, or roast beef. Last month, the New York Times reported on research that downplayed health risks associated with eating red meat, and the response from the country’s protein-loving masses was almost rapturous.
In 28 states, operators of cattle, pig, and poultry slaughtering plants are required to report workers’ deaths and injuries — including lost body parts or lost eyes — to an open-access database. “Pretty much every other day a worker is sent to the hospital or loses a body part,” says Matt McConnell, a research fellow at Human Rights Watch.
One major concern is line speed, the rate at which animals are slaughtered in these processing plants. The faster the line, the more danger posed to workers, McConnell says. And on September 17, the USDA signed off on a rule that may push pork slaughter lines to run even faster. Line speeds at the slaughterhouses that produce 90 percent of the pork eaten in the U.S. will no longer be overseen by federal inspectors; the job is now left to plant supervisors, with no upper limit on speed.
Workers affected by these increases have little recourse, and almost no way to advocate for their own safety. More than 60 percent of the workers McConnell interviewed for the report are immigrants, he says, some undocumented. While they’re still entitled to workplace protections under international human rights law, they’re afraid to speak up, especially in light of ICE raids across poultry plants in Mississippi.
Another reason not to support the industry.