Once the meat packing industry was one of the best paying industrial jobs in America, but the meat industry has exploited immigrant labor to drive down wages, decrease benefits, lower safety standards and eliminate or emasculate their once proud unions. Here begins a new section devoted to the toll the meat industry has taken on its employees. They are treated very like the animals they process: chewed up, often literally, and treated like excrement. Like the rest of this page, this section will grow as I find time.
Deadly MRSA Found in Pigs, Livestock Workers Even though I’ve not yet begun my health care career, I’ve already encountered the threat of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus); it’s one of the resistant organisms of greatest concern in hospitals, where it was, until recently, regarded as a nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infection. Now it’s of even greater concern; it’s loose in the wild, and infecting livestock workers and the meat Americans are eating. And factory farming is probably the major reason MRSA even exists.
Health care workers take MRSA very seriously; we gown up and wear mask and
face shield if we’re to be working closely with an infected patient.
You can find a list of precautions to be taken and other info here.
Dr. Monina Klevens of the CDC studied reported cases in hospitals, schools
and prisons in one year and estimated that "94,360
invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections
were associated with death in 18,650
cases."That’s a mortality rate
of almost 20 %. And now anyone who works with pork or buys it for their family
must be concerned. Though MRSA has been found in meat in Canada, Europe,
Scandinavia, the USDA, you may not be surprised to learn, does not require
testing for it in the US. Professor Tara Smith, with the University of Iowa
Department of Epidemiology, and student researchers found MRSA in
over 70 percent of the pigs they tested in Iowa and Illinois. Her students also found
MRSA in 45 % of swine farm workers. And most of the rise of resistant diseases
(there are others; VRE, for one) can be laid at the barn doors of factory
farms; “producers” must load their animals up with antibiotics or they would
never survive the crowded, filthy conditions under which they're raised.
And, don’t forget: meat industrialists see nothing wrong with pushing ”downer
cows,” animals too sick to move on their own, to the slaughter line with
fork lifts. Crowds are already protesting the importation of US beef over
fears of Mad Cow disease. How will the discovery of antibiotic resistant
bacterial diseases (Mad Cow is transmitted by a prion) affect markets for
American meats?
So What Could Possibly Be Wrong with
Shrimp? Okay, maybe factory farming conditions
are brutal to workers and animals alike. But surely 
shrimping
is harmless, even romantic. Right? Sorry, no. Apparently not all shrimpers
are good-hearted Forest Gumps. Some engage in outright slavery. Like,
just maybe, the ones
that supply Wal-Mart, according to a report by the Solidarity
Center titled The
True Cost of Shrimp. The report, free to download, makes
disturbing reading. One excerpt: ‘Ranya Paew was more like a fortress
than a factory, with 16-foot-high barbed-wire capped walls, an armed
guard force, and an extensive internal closed-circuit television system.
Behind the walls, the police found a scene that one report described
as “little
short of medieval,” with hundreds of workers literally trapped
inside the compound, living in squalid conditions, forced to work long
hours, and subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual intimidation
and abuse. Workers who angered the employer were often “put to
shame” in
front of others by having their hair cut or shaved in patches. Women
and girls were stripped naked and publicly beaten as a form of discipline.
Most of the workers at Ranya Paew were Burmese migrants who relayed shocking
stories about life inside the factory. They told of 16- to 20-hour shifts,
filthy conditions, low pay, and forced labor. Police investigators learned
that managers demanded months of unpaid work to meet debts to labor agents,
or to pay for basic safety equipment, housing, even food and medicine
… Other workers said that if they made a mistake on the shrimp
peeling line, asked for sick leave, or tried to escape, they could expect
to be beaten, sexually molested, or publicly tortured.” Slavery
is evil, whether we engage in it ourselves, as we once did in the US,
or whether we just hire others to supervise slaves for us, to save a
buck or two on our shrimp scampi.
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| A bird on the killing line lifts its head for a last, pitying look at its tormented executioners. |
Meat Processing Is Painful to People as Well as Animals A meat plant that reports few injuries in its workforcez is rewarded withfewer visits from OSHA inspectors. So what's the logical course of action if all you care about is profits? Don't report injuries. According to a top OSHA official, House of Raeford Farms has flouted the law by not reporting injuries to its workers. The poultry industry figures would have you believe that meat processing is less dangerous to a laborer's musculoskeletal system. than toy production, a claim that defies all experience and reason. A six-part series in the Charlotte Observer in a six-part investigative report, interviewed ten former workers who said they were fired for complaining of pain and injuries. Hispanic workers are favored by the Raeford plants as they are less likely to file complaints. Bob Whitmore, director of national injury and illness records for the U.S. Labor Department, believes his agency has failed poultry workers. When shown the Observer's findings, he said, "This is violating the laws of human decency." See articles and video at the Observer site.
Treating Workers Like Pieces of Meat If you haven't read Slaughterhouse yet, you can get a taste, so to speak of what workers endure at meat-packing plants in David's Story on Daily Kos, though you'll have to read the book to learn how the animals are actually slaughtered, even those animals that,unlike poultry, are supposedly protected by humane slaughter laws. After telling of some of the abuses and humiliations David suffered the article ends thus: "David's story is NOT unique to Tyson. The sad, simple truth is if you are eating meat and you do not specifically know exactly where it came from, chances are that many human beings were exploited to produce it. I would never advocate vegetarianism as a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. If you can afford it, you'll find that humane, sustainable options are out there. Try http://www.eatwellguide.org to find some near you. If this isn't feasible for you, consider giving up meat for one meal a day or one day a week. Any reduction in the profits these criminals receive on our behalf is a good start." No doubt some readers of this page will object that cutting out meat would only mean fewer jobs, but that's not so; something will take the place of that meat. Ideally, meat analogues which can be produced far more safely and infinitely more humanely.
Eleven Workers in Pig Processing Plant Suffer Neurological Damage The Minnesota Department of Health announced on December 3 in St. Paul that 11 workers at Quality Pork Processors Inc. in Austin had exhibited symptoms of neurological damage; they were diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy. This is a devastating illness; Wikipedia describes some of the symptoms: weakness, numbness, tingling, pain and difficulty in walking, fainting spells while standing up, burning pain in extremities, sudden onset of back pain or neck pain radiating down the extremities. “These symptoms are usually progressive and may come and go,” Wikipedia tells us. “There may be atrophy (shrinkage) of muscles, fasciculations (twitching) and loss of sensation.“ Additionally, “Autonomic system dysfunction can occur; in such a case, the patient would complain of orthostatic dizziness, problems with bowel and bladder functions, and cardiac problems.” The prognosis is variable. Some victims recover completely. “However, many individuals are left with residual numbness, weakness, fatigue and other symptoms which can lead to long-term morbidity and diminished quality of life,” Wikipedia says.
Quality Pork Processors (they don't say what quality that is) has decided to provide masks and showers for their workers in future. They’re all heart. Well, maybe, 35% decorticated pork byproduct, 25% ear, anus and snout, 20% sweetbread, 15% omentum and 5% heart. These neurological dangers add to the numerous dangers already associated with meat-packing plants related to fast paced assembly line work involving flashing blades and flailing animals which have stubbornly eluded the benefits of humane slaughter methods. (Read Gail Eisnetz’ Slaughterhouse to learn of the miserable deaths that end the miserable lives of factory-farmed ”meat products.”)
Interestingly, Quality Pork has decided to end the process of blowing out pigs’ brains, literally, with compressed air. In school we recently studied auto-immune disorders of the neurological sytem, things like MS, wherein the body’s immune system attacks its own nervous sytem. The principle of molecular mimicry is suspected of playing a part. Perhaps it is not far-fetched to suggest that, if workers inhale atomized pig brains, and their immune systems develop antibodies to attack those bits of the pigs’ central nervous system floating about in their blood streams, perhaps those antibodies would find the workers own nervous systems not that dissimilar. Perhaps? Just a schoolboy hypothesis, mind.
Value of a Family at “Family Values” Chef Paula
Deen’s Smithfield Pork: Not Much The world’s largest
pork producer Smithfield has been found
by the National Labor Relations Board have, “through threats, spying
and firings,“ prevented a fair union election in 1997 at their
Tar Heel Plant. A federal
appeals court upheld the decision last year, concluding that Smithfield
had engaged in “intense and widespread coercion” and ordered
reinstatement of four fired workers, one of whom had been beaten
by the plant’s police on the day of the election. Yet Paula Deen,
Southern cooking chef on the Food Network, says she puts "family
values ahead of her cooking values" and that she decided to endorse
Smithfield not for the money but because Smithfield "shared
my family values and traditions." Well, at least she's honest. A
contingent of workers and a couple of ministers from the plant tried
to present her a letter alerting her to Smithfield’s abuses at a book
promotion in DC was tossed out.
Smithfield is seeking permission to buy the second largest pork producer in North Carolina, which will mean independent pork producers will also be at Smithfield’s mercy when it comes to their own incomes. In exchange for depressing wages and farm incomes in North Carolina Smithfield has spotted the state with scenic and aromatic Brown Lagoons wherein waste from hogs (it slaughters some 32,000 a day) accumulates. You can find a list of Smithfield products to boycott here. Personal note: When I was a boy we slaughtered many a pig for our own sustenance. That was nothing like what goes on in these megaslaughterhouses.
Tyson Defeats Workers' Union Struggle With no more concern for their workers than for the live chickens dangling
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Meat Workers Denied Right to Organize. Voice at Work tells us of a report from Human Rights Watch titled "Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry," details the widespread repression in the meat industry of workers' rights to organize, including harassment, general intimidation, bribing workers to spy on one another, threats of firing and the fulfillment of those threats, and, as the meat industry is one of this country's major exploiters of illegal immigrants, threats of deportation. Of course, the availability of cheap illegal labor also makes it easier to intimidate American citizens with loss of their job if they get out of line. The industry has also threatened to shut down plants that unionize and to move elsewhere, a threat that is all too easy to believe. Additional laws are needed to protect workers' rights to unionize, but even existing laws are being ignored.
This on top of the fact that meatpacking has been called the "most dangerous job in American." More on that soon. See Human Rights Watch report.
Tyson & Teamsters Team Up to Suppress Meat Workers Described by labor journalist Eric Schlosser as "one of the biggest, meanest, most anti-union corporations in the nation" Tyson Foods whose cruel factory farms exterminate millions of birds each year to produce one of the "dirtiest foods in America" (that story here soon), have applied that same cruelty to gutting the local Teamster's meat packing union. They had a lot of help from Hoffa's national Teamsters' Office, which is annoyed and threatened by locals that exhibit too much independence and real activism. The workers had been campaigning for, among other things, the elimination of the sorts of dangerous practices in Tyson plants that had cost one of their fellow employees his arm. One more good reason not to eat meat; let's build more meat analogue plants. Far cleaner and no dangerous slicers and deboners to worry about. Read more about the fecally foul tactics used to silence these workers' concerns.
