Slaughter: Deadly for the Animals, But Dangerous for Workers Too

In my roundups of Thanksgiving and turkey posts, I omitted a brief but rather important post titled "The Intertwined Exploitation of Turkeys and Humans" from the blog The Vegan Ideal. Blog author Dani directs us to an article titled "The Hands Behind the Turkey," written by Desiree Evans for an Institute for Southern Studies publication. Evans points out the not-so-secret truth that many slaughterhouse workers are immigrants, a large number of them undocumented immigrants, and they perform some of the most dangerous work in the nation.

She comments that slaughterhouse workers in general "have very few rights in an industry that has been allowed to exploit its workforce due to a lax regulation and enforcement." And "companies have increasingly come to rely on an immigrant workforce that may not complain about harsh conditions for fear of being fired or deported." Evans continues,

The changing demographics of the rural South are key to supplying this booming industry. For instance, North Carolina, the second largest turkey-producing state and the second-largest swine-producing state, has the fastest growing Latino population in the country. According to the U.S. Census, the Latino population in North Carolina grew from some 76,000 in 1990 to almost half a million today.

Agribusiness in the South today is rapidly consolidating and growing on the backs of cheap, increasingly undocumented immigrant labor. At the very top are large multibillion-dollar companies who make profit by underreporting injuries, ignoring regulations, and busting unions. . . .

The poultry belt now extends from the Southeast to the Deep South -- North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas -- where agribusiness-friendly lawmakers encourage deep levels of investment with promises of low wages and lax regulation.

Earlier this year, The Charlotte Observer published findings from their 22-month investigation into the poultry industry in the Carolinas, uncovering the way workers -- many of them here illegally -- are being routinely mistreated, and how policies set in place by state and federal agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) are tilted in favor of protecting businesses and industry, not protecting workers. For instance, state inspections and fines at poultry plants have dropped to their lowest point in 15 years, reports the Observer.

Injury has become endemic to the industry. With rapid line speeds, poultry workers handle as many as 30 turkeys a minute. Furthermore, in these poultry plants, workers are surrounded by dangerous machines and toxic chemicals, and they're often required to make thousands of cuts with sharp knives each day, according to the Observer. Making more than 20,000 cutting motions a shift, workers can end up with lacerations, debilitating nerve and muscle problems, or missing fingers.

Did you catch the details in that last paragraph? Workers shackle 30 turkeys every minute and make "more than 20,000 cutting motions a shift." Two seconds per turkey. So just imagine--if workers themselves, the ones operating the machines and wielding the knives, are being so badly injured in the nation's slaughterhouses, how badly are the slaughter practices being mangled too? If workers must work so quickly and in such dangerous situations that they frequently suffer terrible injuries themselves, is it any surprise that we have so many reports of chickens, turkeys, and pigs ending up in the scalding tanks while still conscious? Is it so shocking that cattle are frequently not rendered unconscious by the bolt gun and then suffer through having their throats slit and their limbs chopped off all while they're still alive and conscious?

Humans and nonhumans alike are being exploited and subjected to cruelty and suffering--all because humans like the way something tastes, they like tasting it for cheap, and they prefer not to think about how it got to the grocery store and onto their plate. It all raises the question that will come up many more times after today: is enjoyment of the way something tastes worth all this? Or is it time to make some real changes?

For more on slaughterhouses, see Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail Eisnitz. See also the archives of the blog The Cyberactivist, which was written by a former Tyson slaughterhouse worker prior to his death in 2006. See the "Most Frequently Read Posts" section in that blog's sidebar, with titles such as "Tyson Torture Tactics - Knots of Fun" and "Inside the Mind of a Killer." The stories are disturbing. But they are real.