Dozens of poultry plants no longer have a team of USDA personnel inspecting chicken and turkey carcasses. A food safety group used the Freedom of Information Act so the public can know which brands are partaking in this public-health deregulation.
Imagine if employees are your local grocery store or restaurant weren’t given access to the bathroom when they needed to use it. Employees soiled themselves while stocking shelves or working at the check-out counter. That’s what is happening where we can’t see: behind the walls of poultry processing plants.
Delaware-based Allen Harim Foods provides another upsetting example of the poultry industry caring more about its chickens than its employees.
On the day that Arkansas-based Tyson Foods announced $461 million in quarterly profits, a survey of Arkansas poultry workers found 91% did not have paid sick leave.
OSHA now requires employers to report when a work-related amputation occurs. In the first nine months under the new regulation, how many amputations did one of the country’s largest food manufacturers report to OSHA?
The anti-poverty group Oxfam America is urging consumers to tell the nation’s top poultry companies to improve conditions for poultry workers. Today the group released the report “Lives on the Line: the Human Cost of Cheap Chicken.”
Poultry processing firm Allen Harim Foods’ slogan is “Improving the Quality of Life and Sharing Happiness.” It’s difficult for me to see how either is achieved with its mismanagement of work-related injuries and the hazards that cause them.
Myths about OSHA rules and inspections are nothing new. The latest misinformation comes from a law firm raise ire of poultry companies.
Republican proposal to ban unions at the IRS could mean trouble for other federal employees; ExxonMobil refinery in California cited for violations in February explosion; OSHA fines poultry company for “outrageously dangerous” conditions; and a strip club dancer calls for the same protections and respect afforded to other workers.
For the just the second time in 10 years, OSHA issued citations to a poultry company for repetitive motion hazards that cause musculoskeletal injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.