The Kids on the Kill Floor
While most American middle schoolers are preoccupied with classmate drama and homework, kids who work the night shift in the nation’s meatpacking factories have to worry about being burned by toxic chemicals and having their limbs sliced off — and then getting to school on time.
A cleaning company that contracts for Seaboard Foods, the country’s third largest pork producer and Perdue Farms, the fourth largest poultry producer was just fined nearly $650,000 for illegally employing children, some as young as 13, to clean two slaughter plants in Iowa and Virginia.
According to the labor department, federal investigators at the Seaboard facility saw children “concealing their faces and carrying glittered school backpacks before starting their overnight shift.” They also learned that children were forced to use corrosive chemicals to clean dangerous kill floor equipment, including head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, and neck clippers. At least one child suffered severe injuries at the Perdue Farms plant.
This violation is only the latest incident in the meat industry’s long and worsening record of illegally employing children in one of America’s most dangerous occupations. Another DOL child labor investigation that concluded last year resulted in a $1.5 million fine for a meatpacking sanitation company that contracts with many of the world’s largest meat producers, including Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill.
Children working in meatpacking plants contend not only with dangerous chemicals and machinery but also with long, fatiguing hours and other occupational hazards such as potentially infectious bacteria, deadly fumes, and floors slick with blood. On average, more than one amputation or other severe injury happens every hour in the meatpacking industry, and major meat corporations such as Tyson Foods have injury rates several times higher than those of other manufacturing companies. Of note, meatpackers severely underreport injuries, especially, of course, when the victims are illegally employed children.
These companies and their contractors exploit children because it’s cheap and profitable to do so — even if they get caught. Under current law, the maximum penalty is a measly $15,138 per child, clearly not enough to encourage Big Agribusiness to sacrifice profits to follow the rules (never mind morality).
Paralleling the increase in child labor in meatpacking is the disturbing upward trend in efforts to roll back state child labor laws. Last year, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill into law that makes it easier for companies — including her state’s second-largest employer, Tyson Foods — to hire children under 16. Iowa also recently passed a law allowing meatpackers to hire kids as young as 14, in violation of federal law that explicitly bars companies from hiring minors in such facilities. According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, 28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws since 2021, and 12 states have enacted them.
The exploitation of children in America’s meat industry is among the most chilling, shameful illustrations of just how low Big Meat and its powerful friends are willing to go in the name of corporate greed. Stronger federal and state laws with stringent penalties and vigorous enforcement are critically needed — as is a cultural shift that rejects the abuse of children as a cost-saving measure.
