Food & Water Watch released “Factory Farm Nation,” a report this week on the dominance of industrial beef, pork, chicken, dairy, and egg production in the US. Besides overuse of antibiotics, foodborne disease, water and air pollution, and loss of local independent farms, the mountains of manure are monstrous and largely unregulated.
Yet another study tells us that poultry workers develop painful and disabling musculoskeletal injuries.
I’ve got to believe that someone who wants to know that the chicken they’re about to eat was humanely treated would want to know the same thing about the workers who slaughtered and packaged that poultry.
The story was about US immigration policy, but my-oh-my what it said about working conditions in poultry processing plants.
OSHA found what I’d call medical malpractice going on at a nursing station at a Wayne Farms poultry processing plant. The agency called them on it in a letter to firm’s operations manager.
Poultry and meatpacking workers submitted a petition to OSHA in September 2013 asking the agency to issue a regulation to address line speed and other hazards that lead to musculoskeletal injuries. Sixteen months later, they’re still waiting for a response.
After more than a decade, OSHA used its “general duty clause” to issue citations to a poultry processing firm for ergonomic hazards.
Too bad Murray’s Chicken doesn’t care as much about working conditions for its employees, as it does about the living conditions for its birds.
Perdue Farms announces that it has slashed its use of antibiotics in poultry.
The Labor Department convinced USDA to insert some worker safety measures into its new poultry slaughter inspection regulation. Poultry workers hope the measures are more than just words in the Federal Register notice.