Fast Lines, Broken Bodies: The Real Cost of USDA’s Meat Processing Speed-Up
The USDA’s decision to make faster meat processing line speeds permanent is a gift-wrapped present to Big Meat and a blow to worker safety, public health, and animal welfare. The result of decades of lobbying from corporate agribusiness and a regulatory agency that’s cozy with the industry it’s supposed to oversee, this move prioritizes profit over people. Again.
The Meat Industry’s Hunger for Speed at Any Cost
In March, the USDA announced plans to make temporary waivers allowing faster slaughter line speeds permanent across poultry and pork plants. Under this new rule, plants can process up to 175 birds per minute and over 1,100 pigs per hour, with workers expected to keep up — no matter the physical or psychological toll.
Safety and Health Magazine reported that the USDA will also remove injury reporting requirements in these plants, a stunning rollback that leaves regulators, workers, and consumers in the dark.
And despite what the USDA claims, there’s clear cause for concern. The agency’s own commissioned studies show 81 percent of poultry plant workers and 46 percent of pork plant workers are at high risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders, including carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. These risks increase directly with the speed of production. The government has the data, but it’s moving forward anyway.
What’s it like to process 175 birds per minute?
Slaughter line jobs are already among the most dangerous in the country. Workers face grueling conditions, including:
Repetitive motion injuries
Long hours in cold, slippery environments
Denied bathroom breaks
Dangerous exposure to chemicals and sharp machinery
Constant proximity to animal dismemberment and trauma
“They’re killing you,” said one woman, reflecting on the toll of 11 years in poultry processing that left her with chronic swelling and nightly pain. Another worker recalled pushing through an earlier injury — until he fell from a 13-foot ladder and broke his back. “I could’ve been paralyzed for the rest of my life,” he said.
The toll isn’t just physical. Mental health crises and substance use are common coping mechanisms among slaughterhouse workers, who are disproportionately low-income immigrants and people of color.
Disturbingly, children are increasingly subjected to these conditions. As we’ve covered before, children — some as young as 13 — have been illegally employed on kill floors by cleaning contractors working for giants like Seaboard Foods and Perdue Farms. These children worked overnight shifts, using corrosive chemicals to sanitize dangerous equipment like head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, and neck clippers. One child suffered severe injuries while cleaning a Perdue slaughterhouse in Virginia.
A Legacy of Deregulation and Collusion — and a Roadmap from Trump
Under Trump’s first term, the USDA handed out dozens of waivers allowing slaughterhouses to exceed legal line speeds. But the ultimate goal was to scrap speed limits altogether.
As Vox reported, the administration tried just that in 2021, proposing to eliminate pork line caps entirely — letting plants run full tilt, like a chainsaw on Red Bull, regardless of worker safety. A federal judge blocked it, citing USDA’s failure to even consider the human toll.
But the meat lobby hasn’t stopped pushing for complete deregulation, and now the USDA is attempting to fulfill its demands.
This is regulatory capture in action: Big Ag writes the rules, USDA signs off, and everyone else — workers, animals, communities — pays the price.
What’s Slipping Through the Line? (It’s Worse Than You Think)
You don’t need to work in a slaughterhouse to be affected by this policy. Faster line speeds don’t just injure workers; they also increase food contamination risks, pollution, and animal welfare violations.
Ruth Schultz, meatpacking director for the Minnesota chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, put it plainly when speaking about JBS Pork Processing in Worthington:
“There’s fecal matter, there’s infections in some of these hogs that go by. If they’re flying past, how are you gonna see the contamination of the meat if their speed is too fast?”
Contamination of meat is not just hypothetical. Two recent listeria outbreaks in meat plants have resulted in 10 deaths, 60 hospitalizations, and the recall of nearly 12 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat sold at major retailers like Costco, Kroger, Walmart, and Target. One plant had a documented multi-year history of sanitation violations, including mold, meat residue, dripping water, and even insects. Federal inspectors noted conditions that posed an “imminent threat” to food safety, but the plant continued operating until disaster struck.
When workers are pushed to the brink and inspectors are outnumbered by thousands of carcasses per hour, mistakes become inevitable. From food safety breakdowns to animals remaining conscious during slaughter, the cost of speed is measured in suffering and public risk.
Animal suffering under high-speed slaughter systems is already a documented consequence. In plants running at speeds of up to 175 birds per minute, proper stunning becomes more difficult to ensure. Retired USDA inspector Phyllis McKelvey reported that many birds are not properly stunned before slaughter: “If the line is going too fast you have a lot of birds that don't get stunned,” she said. "So you've got some birds going into the scald vats, alive."
In the “live hang” area, where workers shackle live birds by their legs, the pace is so fast that workers have been filmed breaking birds’ backs or using excessive force just to keep up.
The environmental toll of faster line speeds is just as alarming. Higher line speeds mean more waste — both solid and liquid — that can overwhelm local treatment systems. Slaughterhouses are major polluters, regularly caught discharging blood, fecal matter, and chemicals directly into waterways in violation of federal law. Many of these facilities are located in low-income rural communities that bear the brunt of pollution. Faster production also increases water and energy consumption, adding to the industry's already significant climate footprint.
While federal policy plays a role in enabling this harm, individual companies are not off the hook. Major meat producers like Tyson, JBS, Smithfield, and Cargill have the power to reduce line speeds and invest in safer, cleaner practices—but too often, they choose profit over people. Grocery chains and fast food giants that buy from these producers must also be held accountable. If they can commit to sustainability and animal welfare pledges, they can also commit to not sourcing meat from facilities that endanger workers and public health.
Whether you care about food safety, environmental health, animal welfare, or food system workers, the question remains: how much are we willing to sacrifice for a slight boost in output, and who’s really benefiting from that trade-off?
What the USDA Should Be Doing
If the USDA cared about public safety, it would:
Halt line speed deregulation until comprehensive, third-party safety reviews are conducted
Significantly slow the line speeds and introduce measures to reduce injury
Restore injury and illness reporting requirements
Mandate additional staffing and ergonomic protections in plants operating at higher speeds
Enforce meaningful penalties for companies that violate labor or humane slaughter laws
Instead, policymakers have chosen a path of denial, deregulation, and disinformation, and they’re putting workers, animals, and communities at risk.
Our Fight Must Include Workers
We can’t build a just food system without standing with the people most exploited by it. Slaughterhouse workers — many of whom are low-income immigrants and people of color — face some of the harshest conditions in the industry, often without meaningful oversight or protection.
The USDA’s move to raise line speeds and end worker safety data collection shows how profoundly Big Meat influences policy. It also underscores the urgency of a labor justice movement that workers and advocates have been building for years.
Across the country, these efforts are gaining traction. In Arkansas, the worker-led group Venceremos is organizing poultry workers to demand better conditions and expose abuse. In Minnesota, labor organizers who previously helped block proposed line speed increases during Trump’s first term are now speaking out again as the USDA threatens to make the job even more dangerous. And in California, legislation passed in the wake of COVID-19 now requires meatpacking employers to provide better safety protections during public health emergencies.
The USDA’s decision is not an isolated policy shift; it’s part of a larger pattern in which corporate influence overrides basic protections for workers, animals, and the public. The same system that allows children to work night shifts with dangerous equipment also turns a blind eye to contamination, injury, and environmental harm. But the resistance is just as interconnected. Across states, workers and communities are organizing, exposing injustice, and demanding a more transparent and just food system.