New Report Reveals Safety Concerns for Meatpacking Workers

A new report has underscored safety concerns for meatpacking workers in the United States. Earlier this month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) published a report in which it said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA) isn't doing enough to protect meatpacking workers from injury and illness. According to the GAO, incidents are going unreported because workers fear of retaliation from their respective employer. 

This report is a follow up report of the GAO's 2016 study, which suggested that meatpacking workers have the highest rate of injury of any U.S. industry, even more so than construction. Common hazards faced by meatpacking workers include amputation and lacerations from cutting machine; exhaustion, fatigue and food-borne illness. Furthermore, the GAO claims that 151 meatpacking workers have died from work-related injury and illness from 2004 to 2013.

So, what's next for the U.S. meatpacking industry? In its latest report, the GAO called on OSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service to review existing safety guidelines. According to the GAO, there are gaps in federal efforts to protect meatpacking workers from injury and illness. Therefore, the three aforementioned organizations must take a proactive approach towards identifying and correcting these gaps; otherwise, meatpacking workers will remain in the line of danger.

“Every worker should be able to make a living without risking their health or safety, so it’s deeply concerning to hear workers in meat and poultry factories are knowingly being put in harm’s way,” U.S. Sen. Patty Murphy, a Democrat from Washington state, said in response to the GAO's new report.

In a separate report published by Harvest Media Investigation, it was revealed that OSHA imposed relatively low fines on meatpacking companies for work-related injuries and illnesses. Conventional wisdom should lead you to believe that low fines don't necessarily motivate employers to correct safety violations. Of course, this is just one more reason why the meatpacking industry has such as high rate of injury and illness.

Additionally, the North American Meat Institute responded to the GAO's report by saying the market's tight labor means there's a stronger incentive to protect employees from injury and illness. 

The bottom line is that the current state of our country's meatpacking industry needs fixing. Far too many meatpacking workers sustain injury or illness -- and that needs to change. As explained in the GAO's multiple reports, meatpacking is a high-risk industry for workers.