How much more evidence does Secretary Vilsack need before he scraps the USDA’s ill-conceived proposal to “modernize” the poultry slaughter inspection process?
USDA continues to insist that worker safety concerns are OSHA’s responsibility, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that its proposed rule to “modernize” poultry slaughter inspection with dizzying line speeds will injure workers.
Senator Gillibrand’s “Safe Meat & Poultry Act” includes one short provision that really caught my eye. USDA would need to rely on OSHA’s determination on what is an appropriate line speed to ensure the health of plant workers is protected.
The second annual report on US worker health and safety offers a review of activities and new policies at the federal scene, and a recap on the best reporting about it by the nation’s journalists.
Some USDA meat and poultry inspectors work many hours of overtime. USDA insists it doesn’t affect their critical food safety responsibilities.
Pilgrim’s Pride is the world’s second largest poultry producer. The firm’s repeat violations of chemical process safety management should earn them OSHA’s severe violator label.
by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA The current issue of Mother Jones offers an article on the troubling and growing list of State “gag laws” which make it a crime to disclose contamination and abuse in animal breeding and slaughter houses. Ted Genoways in “Gagged by Big Ag,” describes the events and players leading to: laws […]
In a recent study comparing workers at industrial livestock operations and those employed at antibiotic-free livestock operations, researchers found that industrial workers were much more likely to carry livestock-associated strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly and scarily known as MRSA.
Civil rights groups filed a petition today with the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asserting that the U.S. government has failed to protect poultry and meatpacking workers from permanently disabling and life altering work-related injuries and other abuses.
The USDA Secretary tells Congress that his agency still plans to implement a new poultry slaughter inspection system that will allow producers to drastically increase line speeds, while a disturbing new report on poultry workers in Alabama explain the harmful effects of the current working conditions.