Human Rights Group Takes on Meatpacking Industry

[struggle4progress]

The organization Human Rights Watch has focused its attention on working conditions within U.S. meatpacking businesses.

According to a January 25 report, the injury rate for these workers is more than three times higher than for industry as a whole. The report concluded that:

Workers suffer severe, lifethreatening, and sometimes life-ending injuries that are preventable,

Many workers cannot get the compensation to which they are entitled for job injuries, and

Government laws and policies fail to sufficiently protect workers.
<snip>

http://www.safetynext.com/display.cfm/id/98210

[msgadget]

1. Cheap labor

I read the link http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/25/usdom10052.htm This is why he welcomes illegal immigrants and I do not. No one deserves to be treated like chattel.

In meat and poultry plants across the United States, Human Rights Watch found that many workers face a real danger of losing a limb, or even their lives, in unsafe work conditions. It also found that companies frequently deny workers’ compensation to employees injured on the job, intimidate and fire workers who try to organize, and exploit workers’ immigrant status in order to keep them quiet about abuses.

...

In 2000, Smithfield created an internal company security force with “special police agency” status under North Carolina law that enables company security officers to exercise public police powers. In 2003, the company police used trumped-up charges to arrest workers who were active union supporters.

“The company has armed police walking around the plant to intimidate us,” a Smithfield worker who came to the United States from El Salvador told Human Rights Watch. “It’s especially frightening for those of us from Central America. Where we come from, the police shoot trade unionists.”

Increasingly, the meatpacking industry’s workforce is composed of immigrant workers. Human Rights Watch found that some employers threaten to call immigration authorities if workers seek to organize or make claims for labor law protection. Under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, undocumented workers who are illegally fired for union organizing are not entitled to back pay for lost wages.

“The meatpacking companies hire immigrant workers because they are often the only ones who will work under such terrible conditions,” said Fellner. “And they exploit the illegal status of undocumented workers to keep them quiet.”

[prairierose]

2. Believe me, I've seen this....

as OSHA has been dismantled; injuries have risen. But that is not the only reason, speeding up the line also contributes to many injuries and the importation of workers from other countries (mainly Mexico) to destroy the unions and their attempts to protect workers from the exploitation of greedy, inhuman corporations. The consolidation of corporate ownership increases their power. I don't buy meat from large corps, for 2 reasons: they treat their workers like slaves & do not pay a living wage & because of speeding up the lines, I don't believe the meat is clean or safe much of the time.

[msgadget]

3. So, production matters more than food or employee safety,

shafting both the consumer and the worker. Wonderful.

I should have know, but didn't, that OSHA was being dismantled. I found a few references to an OSHA law being changed and a lot on how companies should deal with them, but nothing substantial. Do you have a link or search term I could use to find out more about this?

Thanks.

[prairierose]

5. Here is a link....

http://www.alternet.org/story/21041/

Hope that works right! OSHA like every other government agency that was originally intended to help the people has now been turned over to the industry it was meant to regulate. That is why I call this new form of government under which we live fascism, government run for the benefit of business.

[msgadget]

6. Oh...oh,

Prairie Rose, I expected the usual crony assignment but, even knowing how politics works, I didn't expect someoone who lobbied on behalf of ephedra to be put in charge of insuring the safety of anything. I know you read it already but read this again with me:

he used to be the lobbyist for Metabolife, the ephedra diet pill that attracted so much unpleasant attention. Ephedrine was finally barred in 2003 after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided it had caused 155 deaths. I guess we're lucky Bush didn't put Snare at the FDA. According to The Washington Post, Metabolife spent more than $4 million lobbying the Texas Legislature between 1998 and 2000. Snare was also general counsel to the Republican Party of Texas from 1999 to 2001 and has extensive experience in election law.

Damn, just when I'd vowed to be less cynical!

Thanks so much for the link, I appreciate your taking the time. :hi:

[prairierose]

8. At this point in time & with the way things are ....

working in this country, cynicism is the only thing that will save you.

Be cynical :hippie: I've been one for a long time.

[VegasWolf]

10. LOL. And who should put in charge of EPA? An ex Enron CEO?n/t

[msgadget]

14. Close.

Who else could perform the proposed 'reviews','analysis' and 'scrutiny' properly?

Regulatory Reform

Excessive regulations can prevent the creation and growth of new small businesses and the jobs they create; in the first term, the Administration slowed the growth of new rules by 75 percent. The President wants to streamline regulations further and reduce paperwork to alleviate the burdens that unduly handicap America’s entrepreneurs and job creators. The Administration is taking action in several areas to streamline Federal regulations, while still moving forward with crucial safeguards for homeland security, human health, investor and environmental protection. Regulations should be analyzed based not just on their benefits, but also on their costs. When regulations are proposed, the scientific research supporting their enactment must be sound, and subject to careful scrutiny. And when regulations are out of date, they must be reviewed for relevancy, and to make sure the benefits they produce are at least equal to their costs.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/promoting.html

[WindRavenX]

4. It's like "The Jungle" redux

"Fast Food Nation" was one of the more recent attempts to show just how evil the meatpacking industry really is; but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

[livinginphotographs]

7. Eating meat supports this.

Let the flamewar begin.

[Merope215]

9. It's a seamy industry

...bad for workers, consumers, animals, and the environment. The only people it benefits are the huge corporations that run these plants. Everything's vertically integrated, and life, be it human or other animal, is treated like a cog in a big, noisy, dangerous machine.

[prairierose]

11. To a certain extent you are correct, however

I am an omnivore and for almost 100 years my family were farmers and raised livestock. We raised some of the best beef breeding cattle and sold some of the cleanest milk in 5 states. Of course, that was a more enlightened time. I do not buy meat from the large meat packers. I buy locally and I am making further arrangements to once again have my own land (a much smaller piece of land) and grow my own food. I trust me. I have not been so removed from my food that I don't know what is involved. For years, I helped butcher and process the meat I ate. I have grown, harvested and canned my own vegetables. I have picked, processed and canned and frozen fruit. I fed the chickens, collected the eggs and butchered the chickens to eat. The tough, old or mean ones became chicken stew faster. I have bought wheat from neighbors who grew it and ground it to bake bread. I know the real work that goes into food.

If I lived in a large city and had no access to safe, locally grown food, I might become a vegetarian. OTOH, I don't trust soy protein anymore. I know too much about how the food in this country is adulterated. I have listened to my father all my life talking about large agribusiness corporations. I saw it all for myself when we were still farming. Other than family farmers ,the few who remain, no one involved with the food chain in this country is on your side.

/rant Sorry :shrug: Food is one of the things that I feel pasionately about. People need good clean food to live and be healthy and I wish that I could say the food in this country is as safe as it used to be.

[govegan]

12. The reality being that animal agriculture cannot even begin to

feed the planet. To care for the animals and to farm sustainably is a great step, however to support life on this planet with any kind of care and treatment of animals as you describe is absolutely impossible. If you raised food animals, then you know that has to be a fact. The only way amerika can continue to gorge itself on the tortured flesh of other living souls (or non-human animals, if you prefer) is to practice intensive agriculture, massive monocrop agriculture and all of the perversions of nature that accompany these unsustainable practices.

Everyone passionate about food should see "The Future of Food," the film produced and directed by Deborah Koons Garcia (Jerry Garcia's widow).

"This stylish film is not just for food faddists and nutritionists.
It is a look at something we might not want to see: Monsanto, Roundup and Roundup-resistant seeds, collectively wreaking havoc on American farmers and our agricultural neighbors around the world. In the end, this documentary is a eloquent call to action."

--- The Telluride Daily Planet

Link: http://www.thefutureoffood.com /

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.

The patenting of life forms is neo-fascist exploitation of humanity at is most vile and pernicious level. These ruthless bastards would require farmers to build sky-high walls to prevent the inevitable drift of their precious bastardized seed. These "people" and their much revered corporations are vicious and consumed by a greed that knows no bounds.

In Chief Seattle's oft misquoted speech he asked something like "How can one sell the air?" It is obvious that these heinous corporate structures and the corrupt governments of the west will stop at nothing less. Would you like to have your bank account debited everytime that you draw a breath? Or every time the wind blows across a farmer's field, the farmer becomes the thief?

The science behind these GMO products is as corrupt and perverted as the corporations that push it. They love to argue how their "products" are indistinguishable from the natural and traditionally developed life forms to prevent labeling and other regulations. At the very same time, they love to argue that their perversions are "unique" and therefore must be granted patents.

********************

I don't have a reference handy at the moment, but the meatpacking industry has long been a leading industry for serious on the job injuries (usually number one if I remember correctly).

[livinginphotographs]

15. I agree with you.

And I have much more respect for those that actually know what is involved with making a hamburger than those who buy it in a nicely-wrapped package from the grocery store. It's not a lifestyle choice I would make, but I can't begrudge someone who at least knows what's involved.

[jdj]

13. God. I just started reading "The Jungle" again a couple of days ago.

I am having to FORCE myself to read it, the first time I was really young, now knowing what I know about life, it's even harder even though I don't remember the plot precisely.

[Trailrider1951]

16. This is one of the many reasons why I'm a vegetarian. n/t