15K for a multi-national company. Ridiculous. Courts in hands of industry.
2
I have been a strict vegetarian since 1978 after having worked during high school in the meat department of Safeway Stores Inc. A lot more people would be vegetarians and be much healthier as well if they saw and smelled what I did. It was absolutely horrible...
16
I never heard of the Karen "ethnic minority" before, but they are yet another reason to stop using that name as a sexist and racial slur.
8
It's all Darwinian. Animals are less powerful than humans. The poor are less powerful than the shrinking middle class who are less powerful by far than the Uber rich. Once AI gets a good head of steam all humans will be playthings (at best) for the cyborgs. And the cyborgs will inherit the unrecognizable earth.
5
i think the least covered pandemic story is the deaths of migrant farm workers and migrant meat packers. They were declared "essential" so they could no quit and get unemployment much less extended unemployment and their working and dorm living conditions doomed them. Nobody wanted to address this but their numbers are second only to nursing homes and much younger. Tragic
9
The company raised workers' pay to $26/hr, a good wage for basically unskilled labor, and offers a $2100 vaccination bonus. I don't see what they are doing wrong, except encouraging people who feel sick to come in (if that's true). If some workers feel like they are "putting their life on the line" for the job, they probably aren't vaccinated.
Many readers seem to be mostly concerned about the meat industry itself, a separate issue, but the article does also seem to have an anti-meat slant in its descriptions.
4
@Walker We saw in articles and on the news how these workers were being treated when the COVID pandemic broke out. The meatpackers were truly heartless in the way they treated employees. Raising salaries won't do dead employees any good.
10
It’s hard for me to focus on the article and the human concerns when I can’t get past the heartbreaking picture of the cows awaiting their death in this industrial hellscape. This is what is wrong with our society.
51
Who in America can truly call themselves Christians when they knowingly accept the lack of dignity a significant number of people experience at work? Where’s the outrage over the sanctity of a meat processor’s life?
It’s profit above all else. It’s me and not us. My hope is Christianity will decline and Ecocentrism will rise.
20
I care more about the cows and other slaughter animals than the people. People are not shot in the head with a bolt. There are way too many humans on this planet. A few less is a move in the right direction
8
Somehow I have trouble feeling even a tiny bit of sympathy/empathy for the “working conditions” of anyone who chooses (and yes, it is a choice) to murder animals for a living. Do something else, the world can in fact survive on plants, all life on Earth will benefit and maybe humans will survive themselves.
10
It used to be that packinghouse workers had a strong union that would have kept this from happening.
9
Just more terrible news where workers are being exploited for owners huge profits. Having workers afraid of losing their jobs if they get sick is like a Scrooge scenario. I know someone who paid $200 for a rib roast for Xmas. So who’s making all the $? Not the workers on the line or your local butcher ! Let’s hope and pray for a better new year!
7
Wow, $15,500 fine for 6 deaths. Way to go OSHA! Doesn't look like it harmed their earnings report much. But, that fine was leveled by tfg's admin. That's all part of making America great. Sending profits to Brazil for American labor. Very sad.
6
Which of these Covid victims were not vaccinated as they are irrelevant to sympathy articles. Also who of the infected was proven to have been so on the job?
2
Thank you for using the work "slaughterhouse" because that is what those horrible inhumane places are.
5
What about all of the animals who die hourly in slaughterhouses?? Are we really going to act like this is legitimate, honest work that these people are doing, many of whom are here illegally?? Sorry, but they shouldn't be here and no one should be killing animals like this blithely. And before you ask, yes, I am a proud vegetarian.
9
While working conditions have improved some since Sinclair Lewis wrote The Jungle the meatpacking industry remains one of the most dangerous, albeit high paying.
Even after reading this article I can't really imagine what working a line in a meatpacking plant feels like or the damage it does to human beings.
Few if any NY Times readers will decide to stop eating beef because of this article and I have nothing to say about that that wouldn't sound hypocritical.
Some day soon robots will likely replace most of these abused workers, ending a century-long process that kills, maims and sickens many workers. And while the loss of good paying jobs will hurt some people at least the conditions Lewis described in The Jungle will no longer be true.
9
All this happening during the Republican administration's initial response to Covid, which can be summed up as denial, obfuscation, and mendacity.
The Republican cult's response to worker's problems remains one of denial and refusal to do anything to help.
9
How do we as consumers determine where the meat originates when we buy at our local stores? If I could I’d buy pasture raised, minimally distance sourced meats eggs as often as possible. I’m sure this is a distant reality for many Americans as well. But at least if I knew where the plant in this article reaches consumers I’d never shop there again for any products.
8
@some person It's easy. Stop eating meat.
5
There's no mention of the immigration status of these workers. Whose fault/problem is this if they are undocumented, the govt looks the other way/allows this? Illegal workers were allowed to displace black workers from these jobs decades ago so companies didn't have to uphold OSHA requirements and to bust unions. It's not right but they take their chances coming here.
7
@Me
whether they are legal or illegal is really irrelevant here. Employers are responsible for the safety of employees, regardless of their status, the same way a store is responsible for the safety of its customers. Employers should not hire illegal immigrants, but that is another issue.
And why do you assume that black workers are being displaced? Because in your mind, only black workers would take these jobs?
We are **blessed** that so many people take their chances and come here. b/c a lot of people in the US do not want to work in the slaughterhouses or the fields.
Many of these illegal immigrants are essential workers. Please be thankful that they are willing to do what neither of us want to do. The least we can do is not disparage them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html
3
@Mary
Black worker displacement is the history, not because I am belittling ANYONE.
Illegal is illegal and a source of cheap labor that legal workers could do for a living wage.
3
At what point will these awful working conditions be stopped. Local, State and the Federal Government need to step in with the OSHA regulations to shut these plants down. Furthermore the should be sued by the Employees who have no choice but to do what they are told by their bosses
5
It doesn’t sound that much different from what Sinclair Lewis described 100 years ago , just the method of the abuse , I feel terrible for these poor immigrants, who protects them ?
12
@Marvin Friedman I intend this as only a gentle correction; the author you're thinking of was named Upton Sinclair and the groundbreaking book he wrote about the Chicago meatpacking industry was called The Jungle.
1
I encourage everybody to read Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Eating animals".
It is food for thought - no pun intended :)
13
Our government allows employers to hire and exploit undocumented migrants, as a result they will not form a union and strike for better wages. This used to be called union busting
12
Stop eating meat and all this goes away.
Bonus: better physical health for you and better fiscal health for your wallet.
23
@Susan Grodsky um..you think produce harvest workers are treated any better?
5
I've (mostly) been a vegetarian since the third grade.
Nobody really needs meat. This work is not necessary.
It's just a choice people make.
It's bad for workers, bad for the planet and bad for animals. These animals are a disease vector for epidemics, too.
24
Sure, because the workers displaced by a deep reduction in beef consumption could be moved over to the much better field work picking crops.
4
@What Is This Animal welfare, human health, and the environment in general will benefit. Not perfect, but certainly an improvement.
2
@What Is This I really don't care. It's life and death for the animals. Why are humans more important??
3
It’s a monopoly at this point. The rich owners got together and are robbing us all.
Anyone hear conservatives on here who Xi Stanton attack progressives ever talk about regulations and trust busting to maintain a healthy capitalist economy?
Why is it only progressives do this?
Capitalism will fail here if you conservatives keep this up.
3
One question remains: Where was O.S.H.A., the Occupational Safety and Health Administration? They are charged with protecting workers from unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. In South Dakota the mayor of Souix Falls wanted to shut down the local meat packing plant, but was overruled by Governor Kristi Noem, a pro-Trump anti-vaxxer. The workers needed the federal government to protect them, and clearly OSHA failed to do so.
10
Are infections occurring at the plant or in the home? Do we know?
If outbreaks occur a week or two after holidays, the plant environment may not be the problem.
Of course, the plant may well be to blame. But without more data, assumptions are only that.
2
Family ranches and farms either gone or on last legs. Unions gone, desperate migrants abused, food prices through the roof.
Who benefits. The Oligarchs who run this country..
But because so many believe whatever they hear or see on Fox News, right wing media and at evangelical christian Nationalist “churches”, the people vote for Republicans.
I deeply despair that our country will not be able to be a democracy.
18
Perhaps the default setting for human beings is being subjected to tyranny?
It seems that it’s easy to persuade the masses of people based on race, religion, culture or fear than it is for logic, decency and optimism.
Hundreds of millions of people in places like Russia, China and the Middle East acquiesced to tyranny. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America is some form of tyranny. It appears a lot of Europeans, despite their recent history, are playing footsie with extreme right wing ideology.
Why should we be any different?
6
Calvin Coolidge, “…the business of America is business.”
Same as it always was, same as it always is.
10
@Michael Piscopiello yup. they will not stop until there is no society left. i am not sure what they will do then. maybe they can all move to new zealand.
5
A fitting Talking Heads reference.
6
@tomkatt
On their massive yachts.
3
“The signs are just there so they can say that they care for the employees, but they don’t”
yes - when I see large company responses to crises with words like 'safety is our highest priority' or 'we take this absolutely seriously' - I normally reckon that's like greenwashing - pretending to care - issuing carefully worded statements to be seen to be saying the right things, as if they really care about the welfare of their workers, while the reality is actually the complete opposite, and they would prefer to just squeeze them until they die (and maybe then claim on their insurance).
9
I’m thinking EXXON , along those same lines you know , as in “ EXXON , we’re a green Company “
6
Greeley, Colorado.
If anything, that photo of the UBS plant in Greeley actually looks better than how things looked when I was growing up there, in the 70’s. Those cows? They’re just the day’s allotment.
What isn’t shown are the acre upon acre of feed-lots outside of town, where thousands of cattle spend their last weeks in fenced pens, thirty or forty head per pen, eating antibiotic-laced feed, standing on the sides of a muddy black hill of manure, pushed up in the middle.
What isn’t shown is the pollution from the manure and urine soaking into the ground for decades, or the plume of methane, billowing into the atmosphere, or the stench in town, when the wind blows the wrong way.
And of course we don’t see the exhausted faces and red eyes of the immigrant workers after their shifts on the line, or their hands, missing fingers, missing thumbs, a tell tale sign of someone who worked at the plant right up until they weren’t any use anymore.
Or the big houses and fast cars of the family who started it all, back before I was even born, or their balance sheets and sleek jets, now that it’s all gone corporate, and really there’s nobody to blame.
56
Feel for them. It’s a disgrace. Teachers in same boat. “Experts” insisting that schools are safe. What they mean is schools are safe for them since they aren’t required to enter them, let alone work there all day. Hundreds of kids sick where I work. No problem. Now they’ve decided the teachers should get tested, just once, within 3 days of reentering. For the first time they want kids tested too…. Within 7 days! All useless window dressing. Who woulda thought at the end of the day the Democrats are absolutely as anti-science and absolutely as unconcerned about a whole class of workers as Donald J. Trump.
Just part of a larger class of workers that have been deemed expendable.
6
@Mat Arnold
Listen to progressives. Fire weak democrats bribed by the same donors who bribe republicans.
That’s the problem. And the media that filters the briber cartel against us at our expense. Even the times is far to friendly to people of wealth and those in power.
5
Well, what ever happened to having a real investigation and prosecution by our federal government of violations?
Trumps Secretary of Agriculture was too busy conducting his own private business, but always making sure that the big guys were paid well with our taxes, just as they are making billions with our elected officials here and now.
Just yesterday some of the small guys stated that were running out of business because the big boys, and can barely make a living!
This doesn't seem to be much help here, either with the Biden administration. And, where is OSHA? And where are the taxes that they should be paying, with their immense profits!
This is what happens when people are disregarded and treated just like the animals that are being slaughtered!
7
Our federal government has never done adequate investigations of corporate wrongs. Capitalism and all that, you know. Also there are not adequate standards and there are not enough people to enforce them. The corporations are so powerful and they invest in politicians to such an extent that we are essentially powerless.
8
Do we have an OSHA? Where are they? What have they been doing since they were founded in 1971, 50 years ago?
If you go to the link posted below, OSHA's COVID-19 Safety and Health Topics page provides specific information about protecting workers from coronavirus during the ongoing pandemic. Also on that page, OSHA claims to protect meatpacking employees from the following:
implementing an effective ergonomics program (also see OSHA's Ergonomics page),
implementing an effective hearing conservation program,
implementing design and maintenance of electrical systems and an effective lockout/tagout program to prevent injury from accidental start-up of machinery during maintenance activities,
providing required personal protective equipment (PPE),
guarding dangerous equipment,
following OSHA's process safety management standard to protect workers from accidental leaks of ammonia,
incorporating engineering controls, such as improving sanitation and ventilation measures, to protect workers from chemical and biological hazards
maintaining walking/working surfaces to prevent slips, trips and falls,
implementing OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard requirements and ensuring workers are not exposed to unsafe levels of hazardous chemicals,
following OSHA standards that require that exit doors are not blocked and not locked while employees are in the building.
https://www.osha.gov/meatpacking
6
GREED!
The need to be a monopoly. Monopolies hurt consumers, employees, suppliers and all who would provide services. The only "winners" are those in control.
Government is supposed to enforce laws, regulations and break up these "monopolies."
8
Big Meat Packing -- gobbling up all smaller companies like a virulent PacMan -- doesn't give a fig for the health and welfare of its workers any more than Big Coal, Big Banks, Don's Big Con, or any of the other monopolistic monsters that are wreaking havoc with our nation. Time for a little trust-busting in the interests of the disdained "little people"!
10
"For negligence leading to the deaths at the Greeley plant, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration later fined JBS $15,615."
You put the most important line in the story last.
7
@Viktor
Hardly a penance. Millions would be too little
4
Thank you for printing important articles like this one.
4
There's a famous African American blues called "Killing Floor" after the only jobs at that time that African Americans could get in meat processing plants an slaughterhouses
4
Endlessly amoral greed is what actually characterizes our supposedly hip, modern tech economy.
9
I read a book by a German Factory Owner living in Manchester that talked about the Working Classes of England it was by Friedrich Engels and this sounds like it is right of his book. The part that most stuck with me was the part about “Social Murder” in which he states “When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.” I oddly enough re-read this work by Herr Engels in the winter of 2020 right before the onslaught of COVID-19.
9
@Eden
Going to have to put more progressives in. Until we fire corrupt democrats and republicans bribed to protect the rich owners we won’t fix this.
1
Which politicians receive proportionally significant political donations from the meat packer overlords? Backtrack to find out which political sherpas carried the acquisitions needed to establish this bloodied cartel through the regulatory hurdles.
Inch by inch investigation will expose the political and financial roots of this strangulated industry.
Every society has an ugly underbelly feeding the needed vitals while cloaking them by geographical isolation, employee desperation, and nefarious management. We only became aware of this specific instance because of shortages in our supply of meat for the table.
6
Wow a $15,000 plus fine by the feds. Bet that really put a dent in the bottom line and scared the JBS execs. The fine should have been at least two orders of magnitude higher with reparations paid to workers and families.
9
@Kent Rhodes 'a $15,000 plus fine by the feds'
yes absolutely - that should make them sit up and think about it - for about 5 seconds ...
before they snigger and resume doing exactly what the complaint was about - and continue maximising their profits
2
Meat consumption on this scale is killing both people and the planet. Corporations run the US. Not voters, not democracy , and they still have not understood, once the climate collapses totally, and it’s not far away, money won’t save you.
10
When I read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in high school, I never imagined that we would go back to those dark times, but it looks like we are. Combine that with a Supreme Court chomping at the bit to go back to the Lochner era, a Republican party and corporate Democrats who have no interest in protecting workers, and it's going to be a bad few decades for American workers.
10
The clear strategy by our betters is to minimize costs for themselves as much as possible, right up to the absolute maximum of suffering and death for everyone else.
That is, business—no pun intended—as usual. Just add Covid.
As with carbon and everything else, you can PR your way out for much cheaper, given the well-known, well-tended American capacity for total delusion. And selfishness.
So, the highly unusual helping part from early in the pandemic is gone. Big threat—what if the Great Unwashed asked why we couldn’t do that all the time?
Now *that* is a viral phenomenon that must be squashed by all possible means before it becomes endemic.
Lather, rinse, repeat till the civilization and ecosystem is destroyed. Because, um, Freedom.
Or something.
6
$3 billion in dividends to sate shareholders
versus
$15,000 in fines
For negligence that killed workers,
More than fair.
Welcome to America!
8
I wonder how many of the workers in these meatpacking plants voted GOP because of the 2nd Amendment?
If you want more robust regulation of corporations, you MUST vote Democratic.
7
Time for a enterprising class action attorney to file suit and do some good to get needed compensation for this family and others who died as a result of clear company negligence….
4
The word that best describes America is "greed". At the great expense of human lives. I am sickened.
7
Please tell me where in the world (and any time) that “greed” doesn’t define humanity, anywhere at all.. Blaming us for the ills of the world is just another expression of American exceptionalism and hubris. This company is Brazilian and many of the worst environmentally destructive resource extraction (mining) businesses are Canadian. Israel’s security industries are providing spy and surveillance software to authoritarian regimes around the world. South Africa has supplied mercenaries to the same regimes as so have we. Saudi Arabia has exported Islamic extremism and bred generations of terrorists. China has turned their west (Tibet and the Uighur peoples) into an open air concentration camp. They are also using their wealth to create dependency states around the world that are mortgaging their resources and their children’s future so the CCP can lock in power for generations. Russia has partnered itself with thuggish regimes in Eastern Europe like Belarus and Middle East’s Syria. So I ask again, where is that part of humanity that is free of greed, aggression, oppression and brutality? Where…
3
For the last two years I have bought nearly all my meat and eggs from a rancher who is 80 miles away. All his animals live on pasture, and they are on the ranch from birth until death. If I’m going to eat other sentient beings, then at least I’ll do it with a clean conscience.
Industrial agriculture is killing people, animals, and the planet.
11
Break up the meatpacking monopoly. Ranching should be profitable. Meatpacking employees should not be abused. Brazilian owners should not be allowed to practice colonial-era exploitation in the United States. Shut down the company. Payoff its stockholders. Sell off parts of it. Create ten smaller meatpacking plants.
7
Industry that monetizes cruelty is also cruel to its workers. Quelle surprise.
13
They feed the nation, they should take pride in that.
1
So cattle ranchers are getting squeezed by Big Meat, just like the underpaid immigrant shop-floor workers at the meat-packing plant.
Feel the trickle?
Don't look up, lest it get into your eyes.
6
What? The blood from exploited animals?
4
Slaughterhouse workers should talk with antivaccers. Antivaccers can explain why they don't get the vaccine, and slaughterhouse workers can explain what life would be like if antivaccers got the vaccine.
Talk is good. Maybe some good would come out of it.
The plantations still exist only this one is operated by an international interest.....It is really time to get international, exploitative businesses out of America. We still have our own plantation owners to deal with especially those under the guise of big business, their shareholders and lobbyist. It's all about the money.
4
$3,000,000,000 in dividend payouts to shareholders and a $15,000 fine for killing six employees. Sounds like America.
9
Republicans complain about immigrants but they like the low wages they work for.
12
Nothing good or nutritious comes out of this mess of torture and filth and smoke.
No wonder we have so many health problems. This is all so gross, indecent, vulgar and damaging.
14
TFG made a deal with Bolsonaro regarding meats. Bolsonaro said he does not care what happens to the Amazon. For the first time ever, the lungs of the world (forests in Amazon) have added to the carbon dioxide being spewed into the atmosphere.
The lungs of the world have not decreased the amount of carbon dioxide in the world.
That is because too much of the forests are being cut down.
7
Just substitute the coal mining industry in Appalachia or the garment industry in Vietnam or, or, or... Goldsboro Shirt Company in Goldsboro, NC used these identical tactics against their workers in the '70s. The result? The plant eventually moved to Honduras and now in Myanmar.
3
The most disturbing thing about this reportage is spokeswoman Nikki Richardson's disingenuous allocation of her company's fluffy PR phrase " team members " to the victims of its greed and callousness.
The break chain of management stiffs tasked with processing once proud and eager human beings into a frightened work force mince, represent everything wrong with the industry.
Over the bodies of everyone, from hard working ranchers to sticker shocked consumers who choose beef as their protein of choice, a road to riches has been built by bulldozing and bull-flinging bullies representing an indecent cabal of a conglomerate overlords. May the New Year bring new regulations and tough enforcement of all plant safety rules, so that the folks who work so hard to keep the public well fed can enjoy the health and comfort they deserve for their labors.
7
Spokeswoman, men, people, are employed to spread misinformation, disinformation, redirection, denial and when all out fails, lie. It’s a characteristic of the profession that one lies and looks good while doing it. Don’t blame her she’s just doing her job.
2
Hell on earth. I worked with a teacher in NJ who when living in CO worked at this plant. She was working to organize a union. The result? She was fired. He husband was assaulted and knifed. He kids were followed home from school. Their house had rocks thrown through the living room windows and a fire bomb that they managed to control before being burned to death.
Hell on earth. Pity the workers who need to work there and the millions of animals awaiting a brutal death.
16
Sadly, this would've been an easy thing to figure out at the start of the pandemic. If Trump had followed CDC protocols the pandemic playbook that was already in place, they would've done what was needed at the start of this and not let the virus spread. Essential food supply, transportation, medical, first responders would all have been given proper protection with the necessary workplace protections created to ensure no virus spread. Sadly, we still might need that and the Biden people seem incapable of doing what's necessary. Just more moderate Democrat half measures to appease the special interests. You'd think an intact healthy, vibrant good ole USA would be of special interest. Apparently, we're better sick, in debt and stuck in crappy jobs so we can have a beer with our buds.
2
I don't eat meat. It's not a religious thing, I'm no health nut, I won't preach about the sanctity of animals' lives. But stories like this about the meat industry affirm my decision.
25
The headline suggests to me that the ultimate fear, and perhaps also anger, is being experienced by those about to be slaughtered rather than by their executioners.
16
"For negligence leading to the deaths at the Greeley plant, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration later fined JBS $15,615".
Management just chalkes that up as the cost of doing business.
We're right back in the age of the Robber Barons once again. We've seen too many wealthy and powerful making windfalls while their workers suffer needless disease and death.
Greed is not good for capitalism. Enlightened self-interest is but we've lost sight of that. That's a problem for the future of capitalism as there will be another backlash against the greed of the few which could destroy capitalism.
The greedy don't care though and that's why greed is the worst sin of all.
17
The late Stephen Sondheim put it best:
"Because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett
There are two kinds of men and only two
There's the one staying put in his proper place
And the one with his foot in the other one's face."
How do those stockholders sleep, I wonder?
23
@Zellickson Same way as the consumer?
12
@twill MyDear Twill - let me put it this way. There was once a man I kept passing in a tunnel near my Manhattan apartment when it was 11 degrees out. At midnight, curled up to my warm wife, I thought of this man shivering in the tunnel, and could not sleep. I started bringing him hot soup and a roll - every day for 2 months, until Spring came. This is what I mean by "how do you sleep?" nd I couldn't if I owned a business that caused this sort of misery to those I employed. I also personally know someone who worked in this slaughterhouse for 6 months, on her feet 10 hours a day, the floor wet with blood and other materials released from the animals when they're "harvested." It's awful work to begin with. Trust this answers your question, hope it never happens to you.
5
The "American way of life" depends on this type of concentrated industrial production of beef, and to an even greater extent that of pork and chicken. Similarly it depends on US consumers filling their wants and needs with products made in long-distant and often authoritarian locales, some of which are overt military threats to our country, using a system that decimates local retailers and requires a massive and complex delivery operation.
Nothing will change, and are more likely to get worse, until the desires of American consumers do.
20
@Jim R
No it doesn't. There are lots of examples of sustainable production. See, eg, Grass Roots Farmers Collective.
What's necessary is breaking up the monopolies of agribusiness and industrial farming;
Give food production back to the people who care about the land and what it sustains. It's doable and scalable. It just takes political will.
5
I’ve given up on American meat and most dairy. I want no part of it.
It’s brutal to the workers, the animals, and the environment.
So I gave up meat a year ago. I haven’t missed it, and I lost 15 lbs in the bargain. Not sure how that happened… maybe all those growth hormones and antibiotics the pump into animals messed up my metabolism?
Anyway, all those paragraphs and not a single mention of industry consolidation and anti-trust problems. American corporations, including meatpacking, are over-concentrated and it’s hurting the overall economy. The government has done nothing over the past few decades to stop it. Aside from the moral and health issues, it’s just another good reason to give up meat.
59
It’s not even an American corp that runs that plant. Yes, meat eating has to stop if there is any hope for human survival in the long term. Meat eating is the reason why we have pandemics like the so called swine flu in 2009 and the horrible SARS corona viruses. Also, we have antibiotic resistant bacteria due to use on factory farms. Factory farms have to be banned. They are the number one public health hazard as far as I can tell. The meat from them is bad and the antibiotic use on those animals is a great danger. The pollution and environmental degradation is enormous. Everything about these factory farms is wrong in so many ways. Big Ag is as destructive as the fossil fuel industry. Don’t ignore the extensive problems that animal factories cause including severe water and air pollution. Avoid buying factory produced meats if you have to eat meat which you don’t. Dairy too is problematic. Farmed fish is generally unhealthy as well. The problems just go on and on and most people are oblivious.
17
This was story published two days ago, linked in piece you commented on:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/business/beef-prices-cattle-ranchers.html
Thanks for reading
5
@Rosei
I have not eaten meat for years. No one is worried about antibiotics given to animals. USDA wrote a new memo about not giving antibiotics only to those animals who are sick. They were supposed to put in a report what is the problem with the animal.
They are not supposed to be giving antibiotics to well animals.
4
Dear NYT:
The long term feel-Goodman answer for fixing the problem of exploitive industrial meatpacking is for American ranchers to once again grow and feed cattle to market size (eschewing commercial feed lots, which stuff cattle with corn and chemicals) and open small, perhaps co-op, slaughterhouses, nearby their own free range ranches.
The down side? Ranchers are not always the best business managers, and would take on a lot more complexity and risk by vertically integrating or going co-op, especially at small scale. (Specialization has proven remarkably efficient in every aspect of our economy.)
The exploited employees in this story (although they are now making $26 an hour) would lose their jobs.
Consumers would pay much higher prices, albeit for better quality meat.
Industrial agriculture has prevailed because it so so much more efficient, responds rapidly to market choices, and yields much lower-cost foods.
I am wealthy enough so I never have to buy this industrial slop; I get to feel virtuous because I can afford to buy fresh produce from a nearby organic farm, and have fresh wholesome seafood and meat delivered to my home.
My good fortune will not scale.
Perhaps, more modestly, the Biden administration and OSHA could do a better job protecting these workers from covid infection?
9
@Jorge
Why would the workers lose their jobs? There would be as much meat packing going on, just not for a Brazilian conglomerate! Instead, they could work for small, local cooperatives where profits stay in the community rather than heading to Brazil.
14
@teresa
Although I personally favor small-scale organic ranching and farming, most American consumers have so far left these higher priced items on the grocery shelf.
In a market economy such as ours, the economic spiral is predicable:
Small scale means higher quality, but less efficiency and higher prices.
Higher pricing means less consumption of meat. Inflation is already ravaging the working class; aggregate meat demand will fall.
Many "cow and calf" ranchers, mostly older and undercapitalized, would not survive the transition. It is tough enough raising yearlings for sale to feed lots; imagine how tough it would be for these ranchers to learn how to feed, market, transport, slaughter and sell their cattle in highly competitive upscale markets?
How do they beat the vertically integrated operations of Niman Ranch, Marin Farms or Hearst Ranch, that now dominate this segment?
It is far more likely that industrial agriculture will continue as the dominant form of production, and that these exploited workers wll still lose thei4 jobs, as robots replace most of the human workers on the packing line.
5
Really enjoying my veggie burger at the airport right now. We’ve known for a very long time that there isn’t a modicum of moral or ethical value in the meat industry, it’s inherently evil. Not sure how their cruelty to anyone is news in 2021.
37
The only recourse we have as workers is to strike. Nothing has changed since the 1900s, but it will get worse after the republicans retake congress as their record of strikebreaking is much more formidable than democrats.
18
@Lonny And this is the perfect time to strike. The 1% cannot replace workers fast enough to maintain production. Therefore, it's time laborers work together and get the wages and benefits we deserve.
I sincerely wish workers across the US would call a one day strike to force congress to improve health care, drug prices, and free community college.
4
The meatpacking industry owns and controls the inspectors and the regulations. Way too few inspectors that have no enforcement authority too many ex-inspectors who now lobby for the meat industry. It's all about the money and if a few employees have to die or lose some fingers that's the cost of paying unrealistic stock dividends and paying corporate bonuses.
14
So many reasons to be a vegan/vegetarian. The meat industry is cruel to animals and humans which work for them. Let’s all stop giving them a reason to continue their cruel and greedy practices with less demand for their products.
42
Interesting how the focus of anti-corporate rhetoric has shifted from consumer harm to suppliers and workers. Meatpacking at scale is a dirty business, but our current design is to keep prices of beef and pork to the level at which the average American consumer can eat meat at every meal. Meat would undoubtedly be more expensive with a less centralized operation. Meanwhile, we know that’s likely not healthy and the ‘high’ quality of life this affords is probably associated with obesity and shorter lifespans. Seems to me the logical thing we can and should do is eat less of this stuff.
15
These mega-corporate meatpacking outfits need to be broken up under anti-trust laws. The argument that consumers are better served by the lower prices these operations can charge, is a lie. Just look at the grocery shelves today and for the past year or so to see how a handful of companies are driving up prices because there is no competition. And beyond prices, how about public safety? How many incidents of food poisoning have been caused by unsafe practices that are followed to deliver more profit to their owners? These companies - and I include all the rest of the virtual monopolies we have today - have zero concern for the wellbeing of consumers or their workers. Their ONLY concern is profit, and they will sacrifice anything and everything in its pursuit.
President Biden is right to look at enforcing antitrust laws against these industries and companies, and more publicity from stories like this are needed to increase public awareness and more pressure to bear on fighting back on unchecked capitalism and greed.
17
There are valid concerns in the article that perhaps get jumbled.
The meat packing companies including JBS are trying to maximize their production, revenues and profits. That is working to the benefit of consumers by driving beef prices lower in supermarkets and restaurants.This also works to the benefit of ranchers by creating more demand for their cattle and subsequently higher prices.
The upset of COVID has caused insufficient capacity in the meat packing business. And understandably this can’t be changed overnight. However given more time the capacity will adjust to a place more comfortable for most. Others could enter the meat packing business including ranching cooperatives.
COVID has delivered the benefit of exposing the meat packing industry to scrutiny over many issues including the well being of people working within them, immigration, unions and generally what it takes to get a pound of steak. That is all a plus.
7
@Kerry Landon-Lane That's the fairy tale version of how capitalism works in children's books, nothing any where near how it works in real life!
23
In today’s business world, technology and a plethora of modern planning tools exist to optimize the workplace. There is no excuse for the level of worker abuse that still prevails in some industries. Many businesses choose to only use those tools to wring more blood and treasure out of their workforce. In our modern world, government regulation and strong unions are still the only proven mechanisms to combat this type of extreme abuse. Greedy business executives have been clever and manipulative over the past fifty years, effectively demonizing regulators and unions. They have succeeded at convincing voters to eliminate these equalizing forces instead of exploring even handed reforms. So called “right to work” laws will go down in history as one of the biggest shams ever foisted on the general working public.
10
I work in a manufacturing plant. It’s not anything like these packing plants, but I see the problems related to worker illness. First line supervisors are often quite unprofessional with the hourly work force. It could be they are getting pressure from upper management, but they are unable to work through the challenges and take it out on the shift workers.
That’s where the subtle pressure really comes from. Of course, meat packing attracts lots of low skill management and supervision too.
12
perfect opportunity to turn these sites into sanctuaries for the animals, regenerative agriculture and solar energy plants -
17
Yes, the companies are worse than bad. What is needed is automation. People shouldn't be doing these jobs. They should be monitoring the machines.
3
I’m a little confused.
Why would we expect people who essentially torture animals from the moment they are born through their horrific deaths, in the process destroying the environment, to care about the welfare of their workers?
90
The Impossible burger I’m having for lunch today is tasting better than ever. Thank you to those that continuously provide an alternative to the torturing of animals … and humans alike.
48
The photograph of cows penned, on their way to slaughter, with industrial infrastructure and smokestacks as far the eye can see says it all. The suffering is abundant and sickening — a prelude to a catastrophic pre-existing condition.
This is what it looks like when we sell out our planet for profit.
53
@Pax The serpentine ramp to the abattoir entrance and it's adjacent smaller "corral pit" holding pen is a design of Temple Grandin's innovation.
2
@Pax
Ever see the cattle pens in Omaha? A sight to behold! I imagine Chicago had theirs too.
1
Burning down the Amazon rain forest to feed cows is enough of a reason not to eat beef. Apalling working conditions, which seem to be necessary to run a slaughterhouse given that nothing has changed in the 100+ years since The Jungle was published, is yet another. No other food is remotely as destructive and polluting as beef.
50
Yet another reason to stop eating animals, as if there weren’t enough already—abject cruelty, global climate emergency, degradation of public lands, massive use of scarce water resources, factory farm pollution, human health impacts, etc., etc.
43
The solutions are both simple and challenging - revoke corporate personhood via a Constitutional Amendment and free ourselves
from the tyranny of the Electoral College by getting the country on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
20
No one is denying that these are difficult jobs but so long as people continue eating meat, they are necessary.
There are a lot of unanswered questions in this article: first, what is the culpability of the union in Ms. Aye's sickness and death? Why did Ms. Aye not go to the union when it was clear she had contracted Covid? Why did she not go the the JBS management with her condition and ask for paid leave (cheaper for JBS to give her two weeks of paid leave versus health/death benefits)? How many other cases of similar to Ms. Aye's at JBS - is this a one-off or a series of cases resulting in sickness and death?
In terms of JBS' $3 billion dividend, is this a one time event due to the pandemic or a regular dividend? What's the composition of JBS businesses contributing to the dividend? Is the meat packing operation the sole contributor to dividends or a smaller portion? Are there other JBS slaughterhouses in the US where the workers are facing similar conditions?
Before passing any judgement on who's more or less responsible, it'd been nice to have answers to these questions. Otherwise, this reads like a generalization based on a single data point.
12
@Indy970 "No one is denying that these are difficult jobs but so long as people continue eating meat, they are necessary." It is not necessary for people to continue eating meat.
9
@Indy970 Most of these workers are scared to lose their jobs. Even with a union in place, management can make their lives very difficult.
4
@Indy970 This is a reasonable post. Ideally the piece should provoke questioning, as opposed to a bland, fairly one sided framing. The narrative we're supposed to take away though is "evil corporations, eat the rich, etc" though, which isn't too subtle.
I mean look, there's a case for anti-trust enforcement against meat packers absent these anecdotal accounts. But we live in an age of emotional appeal for various causes, and the NY Times has proven one to cater to that demand time and time again
2
I unfortunaely relate to working for a company that does a poor job of enforcing profits over safety. The meat packing industry is one example of why people are sitting out hard labor and service employment. Ms. Tin was caught in the same trap I am in, where it's work far possible homelessness. Employers feed on this knowledge and do not care as long as shareholders or owners make huge profit. We are disposable.
12
Thank you for enlightening me. I am done with beef.
26
@KS Same for meat from other animals that are treated inhumanely in the food processing chain. For those who feel the same way and can afford it but don't want to give up eating meat, switch to buying directly from farmers who commit to ethical treatment of livestock. Our chain store grocers are starting to pick up on the fact that there's a growing market of consumers who want meat but don't want to subsidize animal cruelty. Avoiding meat altogether may be the better solution, but it's not the only option for people who find stories like this one to be disturbing.
9
Where are the comments from their elected officials in this article? By now the state and federal elected representatives should be able to articulate the problem and propose a practical and equatable solution?
If they remain stuck at "No comment," then print and follow-up.
10
@AM Murphy
Comments from all Elected Officials "crickets" heard here due to the lobbying and check writing thanks to Citizens United decision and corporations being considered a person with all the protections granted especially the financial ones. The companies pay off the members of Congress for their silence and this industry is not alone. K street is filled with offices of the lobbying arms of companies as if these people were elected to Washington themselves. Money talks loud and clear. Look at Fracking and the destruction of our National Parks system that Teddy Roosevelt fought for and the destruction of our water tables. Every once in awhile accountability comes to the forefront but its time to run for office again so put your tail between your legs like a cat that has just been neutered. Ruination of water. Denial of our actions against our climate and our future. Oil spills with no accountability. Having been a vegetarian for 47 years now, I can tell you I have watched all the progression in soy based burgers, crumbles and packaged foods grow leaps and bounds. Manufacturers respond to the buying public. Recipes for Vegetarian food that is simple, healthy and beats any meat you can eat. Meatless meatballs and meatloaf and stir fry dishes. Hearty veggie dishes. Do not miss it and am healthy as can be. If you stop eating meat, soon you get disgusted by the sight of it and you really miss nothing at all. Even the quality of meat is not what it used to taste like.
1
@2020
how do you know "it's not what it used to taste like" if you haven't eaten it for 47 years?
5
@AM Murphy
It is all due to CU. That put corporations on the same level as humans. I don't want to hear how corporations are people. They are not. Until you get rid of that, and all dark money nothing will change.
1
JBS - and the meat packing industry in general - is the poster child for why unions are necessary.
The health and safety of its workers, and their working conditions, cannot be left to the whims of management. No one employee can negotiate and advocate against these massive companies.
But JBS is unionized so I must ask - with the stories of human anguish portrayed here - where is the union?
19
I do understand people want to continue eating meat. Hard to give up, for many.
Hopefully the future will find better ways.
The torturous life of the animals is horrendous. At least people can cut back. The whole Industrial Farming Complex is a blight in the world. I read the EU is banning the caging of the animals by 2025. At least they will be a bit better before slaughter. Hopefully, the US will follow suit. Animals are sentient beings, like us.
13
@Space Needle
If you go to the unions with JBS they probably mark your file if you have a complaint. I was trying to start a union in KC, MO for nurses. I had to retire. It was 12 years before they finally established nurses united.
This story of the deaths in the meatpacking places was covered exclusively with Rachel Maddow. The masks were not appropriate for the work they do. They should have N95.
3
The company paid out $15,000 some for the infractions and stockholders got $6 billion. What's wrong with this picture. The stockholders have blood on their hands. Someone should make sure they all get this article in their in-box.
28
My father made a living wage to support a family of six as a meat cutter. Like so many industries, the 1980s resulted in the elimination of union jobs and a shift to cheap labor in the Midwest with no benefits. All the benefits and money were redirected to owners and capital.
All logic says we need more socialism and less capitalism - but the mainstream media (which is Fox now) and political fundraising mechanisms fool people into believing socialism is wrong. I’m tired of fighting for the working middle class to be treated fairly - when they vote against themselves.
29
@Mark
My guess is that concentration of meatpacking into very, very few companies has a lot to do with current conditions, too.
9
@Mark socialism combined with capitalism works very well as social democracy.
When I was in eighth grade, a teacher spent one part of one day in class describing the path of beef from a ranch on clear cut rainforest land in Brazil to dinner tables around the world. Eighth grade was a looooong time ago, but I haven’t eaten beef since.
34
@L You can find a great 2002 essay called 'Power Steer' By Michael Pollan in The New York Times Magazine online. It takes the reader through how modern beef cattle are raised. It's eye opening, particularly the amount of antibiotics cows in America are fed, because the corn they eat (to fatten them up quickly) makes them sick.
1
How was Ms Tin Aye life not considered slave labor? She couldn't stop working or her family would probably starve.
And that photo of tightly packed slaughter cattle is horrific.
25
@Lee Mei
A slave is now anyone who isn't independenly wealthy enough to afford to never work?
3
Factory farming is socially accepted sadism.
56
Ain't capitalism grand?
22
Yes, but with faults. Like almost everything else not black or white. We live in a gray world.
1
That's an industry where it is only marginally better to be a human worker (profiteers exempted) who is being slowly ground up by more powerful humans than an animal subjected to filth, disease and terror before being killed and dismembered.
29
The victims here are the ranchers, meat-packers, and the animals. The article and comments demonstrate what is wrong with progressives - the main comments are focused on defending Biden or criticizing Republicans. Let’s be clear, if every Democratic stronghold stopped ordering beef, the prices would plummet. Then farmers could ship directly, hundreds if not thousands of miles, charge exorbitant prices, and increase hunger across the nation.
8
@George Foyle
What? This doesn't make any sense.
This article demonstrates what is wrong with progressives?!? How so, George?
Progressives would get the corporation out of the picture.
The process and the profits could then return to the local community where it belongs.
This is how it was when I was young (and I come from a ranching family, so I know what I'm talking about) and there was FAR LESS "hunger across the nation".
5
The meat packers long ago took a page out of the oil industries path to success. It is called vertical organization. The only difference is the oil barons also drill the wells. The meat industry controls the price paid for the live animals by limiting the number of buyers, in this country, that means four.
The time an animal is ready for slaughter cannot be extended it the producer expects to make a profit. He simply has to market the animal or watch the value of the animal decrease. He is at the mercy of the packers who set the price.
It is past time to break up this industry which is a 4 company monopoly, and allow more and smaller companies into the game.
Ranchers are going broke, consumers are being fleeced, workers are dying, and the packers are making record profits. What is
wrong with this picture?
35
@allen roberts
Until DOJ and/or Congress get off their duffs to address the oligopoly you accurately describe, those of us who can must buy meat that doesn't pass through the oligopoly's tentacles. This is how the organic produce market started: consumers diverted their dollars, and over time producers took notice. It's not a fast enough process to fix the cruelties in the meatpacking industry but it's all we've got at the moment.
5
I became vegetarian 31 years ago because I knew what went behind the scenes and finally quit rationalizing my behavior for not making the change.
Owned by a Brazilian conglomerate. Operated by Corporate America. What a great pair: Destroy decent land in the name of raising meat, use antibiotics to create as much body mass (and resistant bacteria) as possible. Require huge amounts of fresh water and fertilizer to create large amounts of animal waste. All of this, and cattle ranchers can't survive, the working conditions are terrible, greenhouse gases galore at every step of the process, all to provide too much unhealthy food for far too many people, and far too much inadequately taxed money for the few at the top.
Does anybody think this is sustainable throughout the 21st century? Or for the next two decades?
What is exceptionally sad, beyond what it will do to the coming generations, is that we could have prevented it. Glad I am old and have no children or grandchildren to whom to explain what is coming and why it is.
66
Like many commenters here, I too, am completely disgusted by the practices of the meatpacking industry. The awful working conditions, the unbearable treatment of the animals, makes me sick.
However, I really take issue with everyone here who is claiming that we should just "stop eating meat." As if this simple choice would provide the solution to these problems. Don't you understand that if we all chose to rely on only plant-based diets, we would be trading one major problem for another?
What sense would it make to drive up the demand of industrially grown plants, all of which rely heavily on fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides? Agriculture is responsible for huge amounts greenhouse gasses and fossil fuel use. To discuss the environmentally un-friendly practices of the agriculture industry as a whole would be opening another can of worms, but plant-focused agriculture is certainly not any better for the earth, and the precious animals of this earth are most certainly harmed by it... just not as directly as in a slaughterhouse. It just takes a small leap fo the imagination to see the connection.
Is it not possible for humans to figure out a way to live in balance with all of earth's creatures?
The suggestion that we should just all "not eat meat" is such a short sighted "solution" (not a solution at all) to the many problems caused by the Capitalism mindset.
11
@Elizabeth
Except most agricultural land is used to grow food for the animals that we eat.
28
@Elizabeth I'd agree with you if it were impossible to develop better practices; but it isn't. Growing plants doesn't have to destroy the Earth. The issues you describe might be issues in the short term, but already there are scores of people around the world working hard at growing plants in a sustainable, Earth-friendly way. These efforts need to be encouraged and invested in in order to avoid the bad outcome you describe!
19
Earth friendly is strictly wild. Sorry but growing enough food to feed all the humans destroys natural ecologies, even if vegan.
5
I'm glad they got a substantial raise. It's time we start paying more for certain things in life. Do away with extremely low wages for tough jobs. I don't think I could do it at my age. I worked in a factory in my twenties. Hard labor that paid $4.00 an hour in the late 80's. I almost didn't get hired. The foreman thought I looked too soft, but I did it.
7
I’m a locomotive engineer with a major railway. A few months into the pandemic, before the dawn of any vaccines, my conductor came down with COVID symptoms inside the close confines and otherwise unprotected locomotive cab. We reported our emergency and were told that we would be relieved of duty ASAP. Cutting a long story short, after six hours we were still without rescue when a VP gave us the order to bring our train to its destination without rescue or access to medical care necessitating a ten hour ordeal that could have killed both of us.
Complaints to company, Union, government, and political figures have been ignored in a conspiracy of silence. The company still argues it did nothing wrong while right but impotent minds think the opposite. There is a status quo of collusion that will sacrifice individual workers and defend to the death these perpetrators of workplace violence because that is what this is. Employers and government have demonstrated a callous disregard for the health and safety of their workers where it impacts productivity. Meanwhile, the railway president and CEO received, among other directors, a “safety” bonus in excess of $300,000 in the same year four of my friends and colleagues were killed on the job, three of these deaths under current criminal investigation.
Worker’s lives matter. Employers have a sacred duty to us. We have families and futures. We are all, regardless of wealth, utterly mortal.
40
I wonder how successful America would actually be without it's continued reliance on slave labour? The treatment of it's unskilled workforce is comparable to some third world countries.
40
Yet another example of exploitation of the masses by the wealthy. Everyone wins with a vibrant consuming middle class.
Excluding the environment--mass produced beef is bad to the bone.
15
"For negligence leading to the deaths at the Greeley plant, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration later fined JBS $15,615."
Why arent these fines prorated based upon the size of the firm? 15k is a nice lunch break for the c level office.
20
@andy
"Why arent these fines prorated based upon the size of the firm?"
Heck, why aren't they prorated based on the firm's profits? Don't OSHA violations always contribute to a firm's profitability at workers' expense?
1
Time to strike, workers. Record profits during "inflation"? Hmmm....follow the money, folks. This isn't inflation, it's price gouging. Meat packing, oil producers, shipping--all gouging. Biden is right to start looking into ant-trust measures. Let's take them all down a few pegs.
15
Until there are substantial penalties or jail time for companies that ignore and violate regulations of all sorts, nothing will change. Articles like this are important to inform the public, but they will not change the situation. Money is the only thing that talks to these businesses. $15,000 is not even a rounding error to businesses passing out billions in dividends. It is a disgrace and a slap in the face to those that suffer. It is barely worth collecting.
18
The beef and poultry producers have created horrific conditions for the animals and the workers. Quit eating this stuff or buy local. I refuse to eat CAFO grown anything.
18
The meat industry is cruel to workers, animals and even the ranchers as the NYT reported recently. We don't need meat, let's eat much less or none.
22
The reasons to stop raising and eating meat are as numberless as the grains of sand on the beach.
15
Almost all people eat way too much meat. It’s production is a major factor in the ecological destruction of our planet. Please try to eat less meat. You don’t have to eat none, just less.
24
Factory farming is cruelty by design. Stop funding these atrocities.
24
Time to break these monopolies up. Of course our government is so broken, nothing is ever going to happen though. Our politicians are bought and paid for.
11
@Matt
I think it's lazy to lump all politicians into one group.
Citizenship asks us to be a bit more sophisticated than this.
I understand that journalists are trained to write narratives about people and events and those are the stories that entertain and sell. They are called "stories" for that reason and they are popular with readers. But we are left dangerously ignorant about systemic causes behind these stories. People think they are boring, and newspapers are already struggling. Do we want to read about monopolies or Ms Twin? I'd like both, or at least make a connection between inflation, abusive dangerous working conditions, suffering ranchers and the fact that the entire industry is controlled by a monopoly of four companies, two of which are American. It could even conclude with a word or two about what is or is not be done about it in Congress. No paper has more resources than the NYT. Please. Everyone suffers when monopolies are allowed to flourish; the ranchers, Ms Twin, the grocery shoppers.
14
@mary bardmess
It is very hard for Joe Biden to accomplish anything, because everyone else is against the work he is trying to do.
1
It seems that the logical thing to do here is eat lest meat.
12
Offering condolences to an employee would acknowledge humanity.
9
JBS, Brazilian company with questionable ethics, just google the owners, brothers... Our capitalist system breeds "greed' day after day, forget about providing a fair, just, humane, equitable workplace... Oh, that's what I'd like American society to be too, pipe dream it seems!
7
Profits before people, yet again. That seems to be the American dream fir American corporations.
8
When are we going to call Capitalism what it is, exploitation of all people worldwide by the ruling class.
14
The greed and ignorance that create this vast system of horrific treatment of animals, lowers and compromises nutritional value of food (animals who do not even in some cases see the sun or eat grass or move much at all while being fed antibiotics), exploits workers, funnels money into few hands, limits competition and jeopardizes food supply, puts American food supply into the hands of foreign owned companies, massively pollutes our air and waterways while externalizing costs, not to mention divorces all ethical considerations from commodity markets— VERSUS— a regenerative economy of food that replenishes soil, allows animals adequate grazing and sunlight, fosters small farms and responsible larger outfits, focuses on the webs of local communities and ecology, is centered in health necessarily undoing the industrialized food pyramid and processing methods etc etc
10
This is an ongoing issue here in California. Many of the meatpackers are immigrants or migrants and the large corporations who hire them take advantage of language difficulties, don't inform workers of their rights, and use fear and intimidation if workers get sick. It's time to boycott this industry until they clean up their act. If you've ever seen a cattle feedlot, they are sickening places, and the stench can be smelled miles away. The real stench is this industry and their practices from feedlot to factory and what they hide from the public.
14
So much moral posturing here, from the headline to the tone and through nearly all the comments. Everyone seems to be channeling their inner Upton Sinclair, particularly the reporter. I'm a loyal Times reader so I'm happy to call them out when they publish articles like this, based mainly in anecdote, assumptions, questionable sources and the firm knowledge that at least some readers will devour this material like, as it were, red meat.
5
@Howard With all due respect, I could not disagree more with your analysis. This article illustrates the horrific human experience by meat processing workers, especially in an industry where managerial greed invariably slaughters any conscience for the humane treatment of not only livestock, but even our fellow humans! It's quite tone deaf and callous to dismiss a tragic family Covid story as "moral posturing," or erroneously question the legitimacy of the journalist's reporting simply because you missed the point. Good journalism is supposed to tell truth, and provide insightful analysis to hopefully make the world a better place in helping readers learn from a painful history. I hope you don't need to suffer like those at this meatpacking plant to reconsider your pontification.
6
@Howard, Uptin Sinclair said a lot of important things about the failings of American capitalism.
I wish the Times had more of his ilk.
2
The main photo is one of the most sick aspects of society. All that is missing is a conveyor belt on the other side with nicely wrapped hamburgers popping out in front of eager middle class folks lined up in their large gas guzzling SUVs with four kids playing games on inseparable cell phones with the latest report cards emphasizing that little fill in the blank name needs to "learn how to concentrate with more focus."
15
Only a $15k penalty? That is what human lives are worth? What incentive does that possibly give them to try harder and do better, as opposed to just being a (cheap) cost of doing business. It is probably just one day or two of an executive’s salary. Shameful.
14
Three billion in profits, and $15 thousand in OSHA fines says it all.
We are descending into a feudalist society, where those at the top no longer recognize there are actual people doing the actual work for scraps.
Just read another NYT article yesterday regarding the four companies monopolizing the beef industry and driving small ranchers out of business.
20
Break up these monopolies.
Create small collectives that work directly with farmers and sell direct to consumers.
For an example, see Grass Roots Farmers Collective
Farming deals with living beings and industrial production is inimical to it.
12
Good. Please draw more attention to the ways in which this industry harms humans. Unfortunately, not enough people care about the plight of nonhumans to end this industry on those grounds; perhaps exploring the myriad ways in which the industry hurts human beings will go further in terms of turning people away from it.
13
The photograph of hundreds of cows in the pens waiting their turn to walk up the slaughterhouse ramp is heartbreaking. I've been plant-based for two years. Did so for health reasons but then became aware of the utter cruelty and suffering that goes on in this system. We exploit people to slaughter and dismember sentient beings. Cows aren't people but they know the fate that awaits them. This would be terrifying for any sentient creature. What we do to these sentient beings is the epitome of barbarism. We humans know no boundaries when it comes to the cruelty we inflict, on each other and every other living creature on this planet. There is a slaughterhouse scene in a movie called Okja that really brings this into perspective.
30
Industrial packers need to be eliminated from the face of the
Earth. Cruelty and greed is shot through the entire enterprise. In CO, ConAgra started the whole thing years ago by requiring small, local packers to purchase equipment they couldn't afford. Then, the big guys "partnered up" with industrial farming (pesticide grain production) and the genetic engineering crowd on the way to taking over state agriculture universities by pouring money into research programs that benefit the industry. In the meantime, the Cattlemen's Assoc. invented a "nonprofit" (one for each state) to hold ranch "easements" (paid for with tax dollars) to butter up the family ranchers they were breaking and degrade the quality meat they produced. Those easements make ranches more attractive to high-end buyers, who know nothing about ranching, and could care less about fair labor practices. Beef is a luxury product that has been - from start to finish and then some - maliciously degraded by money-grubbing fraudsters and ignorant consumers.
16
"For negligence leading to the deaths at the Greeley plant, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration later fined JBS $15,615."
In 2020, JBS posted record net revenues of $51.7 billion!
19
@KJC Perhaps the fine was low because the agency found little cause for punishment. And net revenue is a meaningless number. It tells you one thing. Without further information one can draw no conclusions.
1
@Howard, “net revenue is a meaningless number.”
Sure it is.
2
Another way to look at this suggests that ample data has been available for 15-18 months clearly showing people over 50 to be at steeply rising risk according to age. 93% of all COVID deaths were among those over 50, with 76% among those over 64. I suspect if CDC, who has this data, had clearly stated in a public forum that workers between 50 and 65 stay at home, and if the feds had provided income replacement, we would have avoided quite a large number of these unnecessary deaths. And the post hoc stockout price hikes. These deaths aren't necessarily simply attributable to the workplace (some are of course) so much as age cohort and underlying conditions.
5
What's even more frustrating about this story is that Tin Aye could've possibly been alive today had there been paid sick or paid family leave. I suspect she went to work ill because she, of course, needed the wages.
19
Stop eating meat from factory farms. Buy local!
33
@Helena
That's a good step. How about not eating meat at all?
29
$2100 bonuses, 50% higher wages? Sounds great, looks impressive.
Nonsense. Compared to shareholders' equity and dividends and salaries and actual bonuses to senior executives, workers' pay is trivial.
Because beef production for high-volume consumption prices is only possible with enormous economies of scale; millions of animals from thousands of suppliers, vast feeding facilities, truckloads of potent pharmaceuticals, and a workforce of compliant, cowed workers. Add to that thousands of square miles of agricultural land wasted on low-nutrition grains requiring huge water supplies and endless pesticides and fertilizers.
Anything close to a fair wage or safer conditions for workers would have to come at either far higher retail cost or an equitable distribution of revenue between shareholders, senior manageent, and workers. Management will never yield the upper hand. Even though consumers have a serious addiction to beef, seriously high retail costs would collapse the market, which in keeping with the forces of capitalism, exists on a knife edge between supply and demand..
9
@JS Unless you can provide the actual numbers you refer to, you're just moralizing and theorizing. The firm distributed $3 billion in dividends since the start of the pandemic. Since union owned pension funds would be among the major beneficiaries of this distribution, I would not wait for them to line up to do anything that would actually make the company less profitable.
4
@Howard The $18B was actually for all 4 of the big meat packers, so even more meaningless.
@JS You don't consider $26/hr a fair wage for unskilled labor?
Steers are fattened up and slaughtered within a year of birth. This is unsustainable and the best beef growers will tell you this. I’m not a vegetarian, but I can no longer buy a pack of ground beef from the grocery store. We have to stop feeding this machine.
29
These folks are just figuring out that the corporation doesn’t care about THEM, and only really cares about profits? Welcome to capitalism folks. Lesson #1, unite and lean on your union to extract maximum returns to labor. If it kills the company, so be it, another will pick up the slack - where there is demand there will be someone there to fill it.
19
Looking at the aerial photo of the slaughterhouse makes me physically sick. If meat eaters had to look at the horror and suffering their habits create for living sentient animals, they maybe would make healthier choices. Just because we can does not mean we should.
30
@GB
I have seen the photos and watched videos on what happens at slaughterhouses. Yes, it’s brutal and disgusting.
But I still prefer meat, real meat. I’ve tried the plant based and all kinds of non-animal options. They say it tastes the same, but to me, it does not.
So to find a compromise, I now pay even more for meat, by using a company that treats animals humanely. Yes it is way more expensive. But it also tastes so much better. Even tho I love meat, maybe 10 years ago, it started tasting odd to me. Chicken breasts that would feed 4 ppl didn’t seem right to me.
The place I get meat from now, the chicken breasts are normal sized and don’t hv that icky texture I had noticed from store meat.
I’m all for plant based meats, if you like them. But I simply couldn’t stomach it. So I try to do the next best alternative.
19
@GB My thought exactly. The cattle in those pens looks like insects waiting to be slaughtered. The vast metal plant looks like something that produces chemicals. How could anyone think of this as healthy food?
8
@Jo It doesn't taste the same. But it can be an adequate replacement for death and horror.
Plant-based meats are often a stepping stone. They are generally not healthy (in comparison to plants; their nutrition profile is still better than eating animals). But they serve a purpose.
5
Profiting from a company is not an anomaly - in fact woven through our economy in ways large and small. After reading, in these pages, about how business owners of startups can deduct their investment and profits for years to come, even as the businesses grow and are worth billions. In other words, squeezing the ranchers, in this case, is perfectly normal. I am at a loss as to how this changes for the better.
3
@renee - When people start limiting the size of their families for multiple generations would be a slow start. Gross over-population of the so-called third world countries should be a stark warning to wealthy American parents to stop spawning more than two kids; ever.
5
Follow the money. And then, collectively, we must decide how the profits from industry should be equitably shared between employees, consumers and capitalists. No where is it written that the capitalists should walk away with everything. It is wrong that our society is structured to make so many suffer so a few can gain untold wealth. Just plain wrong
15
The entrepreneurs take the risks and are entitled to their reward. Workers should either push the unions to negotiate better or find a different way to make a living. I don’t understand the Socialist mentality of taking profits from the owners and having government decide who gets what. Investors deserve their share, the owners theirs, and the workers theirs.
3
@Reality Checker… “entrepreneurs take the risk and are entitled to the reward?”
What nonsense.
Where would these brave entrepreneurs be without the courts enforcing their contracts, the police protecting their property? Where would they be without the financial infrastructure we’ve built, the roads, etc.
If these entrepreneurs were REALLY taking all the risk, they’d locate in places like Afghanistan or South Sudan that don’t have all these annoying “socialists” demanding that they pay a living wage.
But they don’t do they. I guess maybe American society has something do with their success and maybe, just maybe, they should pay for ther societal support. Mayne they should share the reward that the rest of us made possible.
By the way, Ayn Rand cashed her Social Security check every month.
3
@Objectively Subjective Just to clarify, business owners pay significant taxes and corporations pay double taxes so the governmental services that you mentioned are paid for.
Well, that was depressing. Sounds like their Union could do a better job negotiating wrongful death benefits.
4
@Bruce
"Sounds like their Union could do a better job negotiating wrongful death benefits."
And better working conditions.
12
@Bruce , sounds like the employers shouldn’t require a union to be slightly decent. The idea that bosses have the right to be monsters unless legally held back by others—who commonly lack means to do so—needs to change.
5
@jb Did you know that psychopaths make up only 1% of the human species but 20% of C-suite "employees" (and 20% of the prisoners in federal penitentiaries). Decency does not apply here.
We get sad reading this story. They don't. Simple as that.
This disturbing fact explains why money was offered but condolences were not.
1
Gruesome, from the cows in pens to everything else about the meat packers.
24
Time to join me…go vegan!
29
@Carey Sanders Nope. Meatless but never vegan.
1
Livestock production accounts for 70 per cent of all agricultural land use, occupies 30 per cent of the planet’s land surface and is responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.
Growing animals for food is also inefficient. It takes about five to seven kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of beef. Each of those takes energy and water to produce, process, and transport.
Please see:
https://davidsuzuki.org/queen-of-green/food-climate-change/
24
@Somi It is intriguing that in the comments section of an article about human suffering, you have literally nothing to say about it. The pretense that abolishing the meat trade will somehow improve the lives of ordinary people requires a lot of intermediate steps that are never spoken of by the political chattering classes, unless dismissively. Don’t you understand? The problem is capitalism without strong and decisive regulations to protect the commonwealth.
20
@Philippe Egalité , comments are often written that address a particular aspect of an issue, such as the environmental damage of animal farming. So are comments that attack others for not being what the complainer thought they ought to be. You don’t need personal attacks to make your point. We have a surplus of those already.
9
Time to strike. If Americans see even minor disruption in their easy access to BEEF they will rally to support your cause.
3
I no longer eat beef or other animal proteins. The industry is built on disdain for the safety and health of workers, animal cruelty, and profit at all costs to the environment and our climate.
28
Very literally the 1890s “Gilded Age” being repeated. Exactly what decades of Republican deregulation and court packing aimed for is coming to a head. We are going backwards mire than a century to a time when a few “Robber Barons” ruled the United States by purchasing state legislatures and the US senate
32
OSHA has lost its teeth - $15k in fines for negligence leading to deaths is hardly a disincentive to the companies.
OSHA needs the power to levy costly fines against companies for dangerous work conditions. Will Congress act? Hmmm…
30
I wonder how the supervisors and plant managers at these places are incentivized. Something tells me it's based on production output, and nothing on worker health & safety.
Actions speak louder than words.
The JBS "spokesperson" has probably never interacted with any plant personnel.
15
As a consumer I only have one real option which is and has been to reduce my overall meat intake and replace it with other forms of protein.
Every single one of us has a comfort level but this story is about no more than management decisions in a conglomerate that’s a result of aging capitalism. Nothing but anti trust laws will change the structure of these companies but they will only figure out more efficient ways to do what they do.
19
. . "The world stinks of man". . 60% of the world's mammalian biomass are our domesticated animals, 36% comprises humans and 4% are the remaining wild mammals.
11
Not much seems to have changed in the 115 years since Sinclair's "The Jungle" enlightened the masses.
44
Thought the same. Excellent book
8
@John Virgone If enough Americans still read books we'd have a civilized country.
2
Message to management lackeys: These employees are not “team members,” and you sound ridiculous when you use that term. They are employees - or, more accurately, your slaves. Not your “team.”
47
@Kit Carson they are as much a team as the nfl players… just not as well compensated. And the owners will get rid of them as fast or faster depending upon how many new hire have crossed the border this month.
These plants would close down in days if the I-9 forms were accurate and verified
13
Let’s agree that meat-packing has been a miserable industry since Sinclair Lewis wrote about it. And let’s also acknowledge most of the product is going where the population is - cities. That said, this has nothing to do with inflation or Biden’s failure - gas, hay, groceries, wall board are all rising in price. Trying to conflate this issue in order to support a progressive blame-shifting narrative only lessens support for the true victims here, the factory workers and the animals.
17
While corporate Republicans fleece their own voters, raking in huge profits while complaining about inflation and blaming Joe Biden, the voters are more concerned about being anti woke and CRT, which isn't taught in schools.
20
@TastetheDifference
Yes. Bread and circuses.
8
The one and only DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species began in Africa 300,000+ years ago.
Driven by our human biological science omnivore nature to crave fat, salt and sugar by active hunting and gathering.
Until about 15, 000 years ago when domestication of animals led to mass production slaughterhouses and wet markets in human settled villages and cities matching and mixing mutually infectious bacteria, fungi, protozoans and viruses.
Domestication of plants about the same time led to a similarly sedentary agricultural human lifestyle.
There are costs and benefits to every human science and technology advancement and discovery.
My hometown Chicago was partially built by the corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarch wealth of slaughterhouses built by railroad barons exploiting Midwest geography. I remember the unforgettable sight and stench inside and outside of the beef and pork the Union Stock Yards.
See ' The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair
13
@Blackmamba
Hunting animals for food requires a lot more cooperative human brainpower than gathering plants.
Animal protein, particularly when cooked, has comparatively extraordinary human calorie and nutritional value.
2
Agribusiness, the military industrial complex, and the fossil fuel industry are the unholy trinity of American politics. They have too much power and influence. Politicians are beholden to them for donations and cash and our universities could barely survive if it weren't for the "Raytheon Engineering Lab" or the "ConAgra Center for Food Science."
They bring death, despair, and environmental ruin into our communities and homes - all of it heavily subsidized by our own tax dollars.
24
@MB Let's update the name to "Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex".
7
Simple.
Boycott beef by not consuming beef.
I stopped eating beef in the late 90’s, though I admit for personal reasons - short and long term health, flavor, price, availability of alternate proteins, etc.
Nothing wrong with boycotting to stamp out animal cruelty, lessen the cattle ozone depleting emissions, animal cruelty, punish the meat packing industry.
Just my two cents. I realize lots of folks already share this opinion.
54
@Shlomo Wouldn't even have to boycott any meat to make a HUGE difference and help save the planet. We could start by at least doing ONE meatless day a week. That alone would have a major impact. Problem is trying to get selfish, spoiled Americans to actually lift a finger to do anything like that.
6
@dochi I started cooking more vegetarian dishes during Covid, using recipes from online. I feel healthy when I do. I rarely eat beef, mainly chicken and fish. You save money when you eat less meat. I watched one of the documentaries about the meat industry and made changes. It was horrifying seeing animals scared and knowing what was coming next.
8
“the Brazilian conglomerate that owns the plant”
And therein lies much of the problem. Conglomerates have no human face, no individual accountability. At least when Carnegie was murdering union activists, we knew his name, although he didn’t face any accountability at the time, or ever.
As long as we allow corporations to be run by nameless, faceless men, they will have no qualms about wrecking the planet and treating workers like slaves.
We need to start over. Get rid of any form of lobbying. Limit the size of corporations. Abolish conglomerates. Put workers on the boards of corporations like they do in Europe. Tie CEO and corporate profits to wages of the lowest paid workers. Hold individuals accountable for the decisions they make.
The first step is legislating to overturn Citizens United. The problem is we need to get corporate (“moderate”) Democrats to do the right thing, or get rid of them. It’s no coincidence that things have gotten much worse for workers since Clinton was president. Yes, Reagan was worse, but democrats have been complicit.
40
My aging mother lives alone, and recently started needing help with daily activities. To address this need quickly, my sister and I set her up with someone from a national agency (that advertises frequently, and you've probably heard of them).
We were paying the agency $42/hour. The woman helping our mother told us she was being paid $9/hour.
That is straight up exploitation.
The working conditions are nowhere near as bad as at the JBS plant. But the pattern of exploitation is the same.
(We are in the process of hiring an independent CNA, who will keep the money he or she is paid. We suspected that the agency was taking a large cut, but not to the extreme degree that we discovered.)
65
@MidtownATL We paid $35/hour for (24/7) in-home caregivers for my father. The workers were paid $14/hour. It's not an easy job. One caregiver talked about forming a union of CNAs in the Chicago area.
We'd considered hiring a few CNAs directly from the community college program but were talked out of it by a friend who did the same and was sued when her father, who suffered from dementia, punched a caregiver in the face. The suit was eventually thrown out of court but not before legal fees were run up. So be careful!
12
@Gray Jay
Thank you. I completely agree this is difficult work. I'd argue this work is worth at least $25/hour, even without a CNA certification.
I appreciate your point about liability. However, I am not sure that an agency would protect my mother (or my sister and I) from being sued. I'd have to check the contract. I wouldn't be surprised if the agency would sue us if anything bad happened.
I do know that the contract has a strong anti-compete clause. You can't directly hire the caregiver for years. (That is understandable.)
4
Yes we need some regulations and protections. That’s what a good union provides
5
Wow. for a company paying 3 billion dollars in dividends, a fine of $15,615 must have really hit them hard.
166
If i wasn’t already a vegetarian I’d stop eating meat.
35
A "whopping" fine of nearly $16,000?!?!?
JBS probably paid for it out of the petty cash drawer.
It truly is amazing to many of us how ineffective our federal government, at every level, has become.
76
@Tom Q
I don't know. The federal government is great at ensuring low taxes on billionaires.
43
@Tom Q We shouldn't need the Fed but we do apparently--this is Hobbes or Locke--Man is inherently bad.
5
Harvest record profits. Tell you everything about our chances of containing global warming. Meat will kill us.
23
@Dan - You are sort of correct. Over-population will be the demise of humankind. The decline started before WWII and has accelerated exponentially since 1950 in the U.S.
4
@Dan It's not just meat. It's the attitude of the humans who wreak the damage - the attitude that the earth and its flora and fauna are here for us to use. Apparently no responsibilities accompany this "right" that we imagine.
2
Meanwhile in Australia -
Industrial manslaughter— where a PCBU, or a senior officer, negligently causes the death of a worker.
Where a PCBU, or senior officer, commits industrial manslaughter, a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment for an individual or $10 million for a body corporate applies.
Find more information and definitions of industrial manslaughter.
Category 1—the next highest penalty under either the WHS Act or the ES Act is for a category 1 offence. These are serious breaches where a duty holder recklessly endangers a person to risk of death or serious injury. Offences involving reckless conduct will be prosecuted in the District Court.
Corporation: up to $3 million
Individual as a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) or an officer: up to $600,000/5 years jail
Individual (e.g. a worker): up to $300,000/5 years jail.
Category 2—failure to comply with a health and safety duty or electrical safety duty that exposes a person to risk of death, serious injury or illness. Offences will be prosecuted in the Magistrates Court.
Corporation: up to $1.5 million
Individual as a PCBU or an officer: up to $300,000
Individual (e.g. a worker): up to $150,000.
Category 3—failure to comply with a health and safety duty or electrical safety duty. Offences will be prosecuted in the Magistrates Court.
Corporation: up to $500,000
Individual as a PCBU or an officer: up to $100,000
Individual (e.g. a worker): up to $50,000.
19
In the 1950's, more than 90% of meatpacking workers were in a union (outside of the South). Wages were on a par with autoworkers. Since then, the meatpacking industry has actively sought to employ undocumented workers to destroy the unions, decrease safety and drive down wages. They have succeeded.
Neither the republicans, nor the democrats have done much of anything to stop these practices. We need decent working conditions and decent wages for workers legally in this country before we worry about anyone else.
50
@Michael H.
Meanwhile our southern border is a wide open and government is stifling businesses, guaranteeing that the status quo will continue.
4
@Michael Undocumented workers are often the only ones willing to do demanding, dangerous slaughterhouse jobs for $10/hour. And unionized workers would be a cure for that. So would throwing some CEOs who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants in jail. (e-Verify is free and easy to use.)
Conservative politicians, think tanks and media have done an amazing job of turning millions of Americans against unions–except of course precious, untouchable police unions, whose primary purpose is to protect cops from consequences and accountability.
The "pro-business" GOP loves cheap labor so they bluster about illegal immigrants but do nothing to address the problem, unless one considers Trump's vanity wall–that can be cut through in minutes and falls down in high winds–to be a solution.
Democrats should be acting to improve the wages & working conditions of slaughterhouse workers but they show no inclination to do so.
17
@KJC
The plant in the article pays $26/hr, not 10.
5
The higher ups profit big time while those made it possible continue to suffer.
16
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
- Tolstoy
34
I worked in slaughterhouses as a water treatment consultant. While it may be difficult, especially now, to go on a plant tour of these types of facilities, It is essential to understand where our food comes from and how it is processed -- by seeing it directly. It is not enough to visit a farm. There is nothing quite like viewing an industrial "killing floor" from above.
39
@Daniel A friend worked in a chicken processing plant for a summer. Never ate chicken again.
5
My dad had to visit a slaughterhouse decades ago for work he was doing for an insurance company. My mother told me later that he was so shaken by what he’d seen that it haunted him for years.
5
@dochi
Funny. I worked in a sewage treatment plant for a few summers. But I'll be darned, I can't stop creating sewage. Go figure.
2
Stop eating meat. The cruelty involved is horrible, immoral, and diminishes the dignity of humans. The production of meat is devasting to the planet. Vegetarian and vegan diets are healthier.
62
@Permantly Horrified Factory farming is also devastating to the planet. The whole food production system is not sustainable.
9
"One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption"
"Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and out of memory"
" if we are the greatest nation the sun has ever shone upon, it would seem we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy"
"It is impossible to get a man to understand something if his livelihood depends on hom not understanding"
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1905)
66
@steve Required reading in my business school days.
And Sinclair’s writings are still valid today.
14
@steve
Thank you. Sadly, not much has changed.
My uncle wrote a book based on the Hamlet Chicken Fire of 1991.
The Hamlet chicken processing plant fire was an industrial fire in Hamlet, North Carolina, at the Imperial Foods processing plant on September 3, 1991, resulting from a failure in a hydraulic line. Twenty-five workers were killed and 55 injured in the fire, trapped behind locked fire doors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_chicken_processing_plant_fire
Also, an echo of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
23
@MidtownATL And yet you'll hear Republicans and "centrist" Democrats still claiming how we have to get evil government "off their backs".
2
Since the operators of meat packing plants were allowed to increase the speed of line operations, I would think that more than just worker safety concerning the coronavirus are lapsing, as is the ability of meat inspectors to do their job.
The profit side of things gets what it asks for way too often when it is the workers and consumers that do drive the economy.
6
Read the article and not sure what the company did wrong. Got the employees vaccinated and resumed normal operations.
7
These are the jobs that many red-blooded Americans state the immigrants are taking.
I won’t disagree.
However, how many citizens, born and raised in this country will take these jobs-menial and thankless jobs-with taskmasters in charge.
There is no easy solution although many will state to just not eat meat. That is no solution.
Enforcement of labor and job safety rules would be a start.
But, a person we all know too well stated regulations are killing businesses.
14
@Dan Actually, not eating meat is the solution. Everyone (including the planet) will be healthier when seeking out an alternative diet.
29
@elaine farrant It is still a far-fetched dream to encourage the worldwide population to have an alternative diet.
2
@Dan Any time a local says something about an 'immigrant' taking his job, I always ask them. "What job is that? The one you have of sitting around drinking all day and whining?" W.V. is full of them and many on government relief, but unlike those evil POC in the cities, they 'earned' their welfare, they'll claim!
2
The meatpackers are harvesting "record profits" mainly because the unionized, middle-class jobs that used to exist in their plants were busted by utilizing a flood of docile legal and illegal immigrants that work for less.
19
“Just believe in the positive view, and help yourself and others.” Wise words from Ms. Aye. All the more reason my family is vegetarian.
7
I visited European countries many times. Even fast foods are expensive there. Later, I realized that their companies pay decent wages and vacation times to employees. It is their laws that make a difference.
Here, our laws are supposedly to protect the employees. Instead, our laws favor and protect the employers from lawsuits. It is hard to change the way of doing things here without the help from the laws.
There is another article today in NYT explaining why our fragmented democracy doesn't work. I would say that inequality and unfair laws contribute to the failure most of the times.
37
@Usok The main difference in Europe is that they pay next to nothing for military and defense in general (precisely because Americans pay to defend them), and that even low income people pay almost 50% of their wages toward social charges. When we stop putting so much money into NATO and our military, we will be able to have nice things, too.
8
Is that because the Europeans aren’t spending enough or is it more likely we spend a lot more than necessary on military?
14
@Usok
The story is in a union shop with a new $26/Hr contract and $2,100 bonuses for getting the COVID jab. What does "decent pay" mean to you?
9
Reminds me of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” Awful.
25
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
30
I wonder if the animal victims on the slaughter house feel the fear and anger? They way we treat others, including the animals and plants that share the world with us, will lay the foundations for how we ourselves will be treated by them. The capitalist model for meat production is as savage and cruel and inhumane as anything we done. I hope to live long enough to see a society that can reinvent itself along kinder, more sustainable principles.
85
Of course they do. It is well documented that cows feel the way we do.
15
@JJ Yes, animals feel stress just like humans and like humans release stress hormones like adrenaline, cortisol, catecholamines, glucocorticoids. Apparently these hormones affect the taste of meat negatively. Having animals penned up in these holding pens definitely stresses these animals.
7
This is the same story repeated for centuries. Americans do not want to do hard, dirty, smelly work. Instead, immigrants are used to do what we will not do, especially the slaves.
Even at $26/hr., only immigrants will take these jobs. Exploitation must be in our DNA. Exploitation of the weak is a centerpiece of American culture. We can't even tax the enormous profits the exploitation generates to provide the necessary services the weak require. We call that socialism. Instead, we have serfdom.
184
@Bruce Rozenblit
Ironically, a great many of the immigrants coming to do these jobs are fleeing Socialist or Communist (or variations on Marxist/Leninist themes) countries where the jobs are even worse, are harder to get, and pay far less.
11
Forget the scare words- communism and socialism- they are running from countries where their rich have control and have stifled their economy.
20
@Clown Dream More accurately, they are fleeing autocracies, oligarchies, and dictatorships, which have little to do with Marxist/Leninist or any other political philosophy themes. Just as our so-called "Capitalist" system in the U.S. is verging into a Republican-led autocracy.
15
When the Republicans talk about the "job creators", these are the kind of jobs they are creating. With the terrible conditions of the JBS employees.
They are not talking about the restaurant owner or building contractor in your community. They are talking about billionaires who exploit their workers (and suppliers, and customers). Like JBS.
Neo-feudalism. The new Gilded Age. The Lords and the Serfs.
The Republican P.R. machine has rebranded the Lords as the "Job Creators."
170
@MidtownATL I don’t think we’re living in a “new” gilded age. We’ve been living in a continuation of it. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in 1906, and nothing has changed. And won’t.
7
The horror described in the article occurs because most consumers remain willfully ignorant about where their meat comes from and the great toll it takes on living creatures, humans included.
110
As an industry, when you get legislation passed to make filming inside a slaughterhouse illegal, you’re up to no good.
399
@HistoryRhymes
Those Ag Gag laws are the most clear-cut examples of politicians being paid to write whatever a powerfully wealthy constituency wants.
They are unconstitutional and fundamentally anti-American. Everyone associated with their passage should be drummed out of public life forever and shunned by decent people everywhere.
99
@HistoryRhymes They don't want filming because they are hiding the way they treat animals and humans, and it is well documented.
25
@Clown Dream See also: US tax code
1
The Brazilian conglomerate JBS is run by friends of bolsinaro. Why would anyone expect THEM to do better?
Ask the butcher the source of the meats and don't buy jbs, swift, Smithfield products. They only care about the bottom line, not employees, not buyers.
If available buy local. it will likely cost more but you're saving local jobs. Local companies care about their local reputation.
22
@SW
Smithfield is owned by the Chinese. They dump their pollution here (on poor, rural and heavily POC communities), cut the local farmers' margins down to subsistence levels, and export all the pork and profit to China.
7
@SW
You know who owns Smithfield, right?
2
@fFinbar
Yes, I think that's why Smithfield is on his "no buy" list, along with JBS, and Swift.
1
JBS sees animals as meat. The distinction blurs, and hyman workers are also treated like meat.
14
@dr. c.c. That is what happens when you assign a monetary value to life itself.
2
The only concern is the how much the shareholders are making and what are upper level managements stock options looking like each quarter.
17
Some brave soul in Congress must step up and recognize the oligopoly for what it is. Nothing good can come from a tiny number of individuals controlling the food supply of hundreds of millions.
The drawing of the bucolic, Norman Rockwell farm on the package of meat at the store is a sin. Maybe a picture of the cruel madness of the processing factories on those yummy breakfast sausages might open a few eyes.
But I doubt it.
16
Welcome to the New Gilded Age. Neo-feudalism. The Lords and the Serfs.
JBS is owned by billionaire Brazilian brothers. Who spent time in prison for corruption.
97
Inhumane industry for humans and animals. Kiilling floors with rivers of blood. Living breathing, sensible creatures maltreated their entire life are after agonizing transport conditions, being violently finished off here and wrapped in plastic. Lives so senselessly interrupted so people, most of them overweight, can have their steaks. I wonder how in 21st century knowing all details about it, can you still eat this antibiotics, fear and terror packed flesh? Even worse, how can you make obscene money on slaughtering billions of innocent voiceless creatures? We are the most violent and cruel species on earth.
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@ZaZa only the privileged and pampered can take such a reductionist view of humanity and the rest of the world. We have anthropomorphized our fellow animals until they are a parody of themselves. That view allows people to treat the rest of the worlds creatures like their entertainment and pets (or "companions). They aren't "innocent", they fight and kill and copulate and compete and eat each other in profusion. And we too are animals, not some higher beings that doesn't eat and defecate and die. Violence and cruelty are human affectations not "reality", reality is the wolf eating the calf and the orca eating the seal pup. Its life and it eats itself, that's what you object to and project it on everyone but yourself, can one be any more self absorbed than that?
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The picture of the meat processing plant that accompanies this article really shocked me. Wow. Big Meat. It looks like the huge, polluting factory that it is. Did you notice what looks like a conveyor belt leading from the holding pens to the factory? Yeah, you can imagine what that's for.
While I don't feel there is anything morally wrong with humans eating meat (we are omnivores, after all), killing both animals and meat plant workers in this way is truly inhumane.
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Business owners care about one thing, greed. Never understood why this country worships these sociopath's.
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Such hysterical nonsense. You get vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, you get boosted when wiggle, you go back to normal life. It's criminal to lie that the vaccines don't work out are failing en masse. And if you're not vaccinated you're fired, but, of course, everybody working for major meat processors are vaccinated.
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Understand that this nation, the US, was founded on industry. Industry runs the government. It pays for who it wants to sit in any office. And it gets laws enacted based on their desires.
We, the People, never had a chance. It’s mostly smoke and mirrors. As for a steady line of putrid Republican presidents, I thought W Bush couldn’t get any worse until 2016 rolled around. It’s not that Trump is a habitual liar. Not that he try’s and succeeds swindling anyone stupid enough to do business with him. Not even that he would and likely did sell state secrets as any good treasonous person. No that’s not the worst of Trump. The worst was him dividing Americans and making us all hate each other. That is his worst lasting legacy.
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Break up these conglomerate packing houses. Not good for the ranchers, nor the consumers. Prices are rising because stockholders come first. $3 billion to shareholders? That’s the inflation we are seeing at the grocery stores! Anti-trust laws are on the books, enforce them now.
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@James Barry I agree they're bad for ranchers and consumers. We have to consider, however, how to move beyond them.
Let's say we just suddenly shut them down. OK now we've just slowed down the supply chain for beef. That's going to lead to food shortages, stores not having enough etc. It will drive the prices up further.
There's an efficiency in Big Ag, GMO's etc. that we don't want to admit how much we rely on. We all want what's best for the little guy. But when we destroy the efficiency of production, the little guy gets hurt in terms of higher prices and shortages. In short: everything that's bad in the world is worse for the poor and powerless.
So while I personally don't eat meat (I do eat fish but am starting to reconsider that as well) I understand these horrible slaughterhouses are -- maybe not a "necessary" evil, but -- at least a part of our global supply chain that serves as a crutch, keeping retail prices lower than they'd be without them. So whatever takes their place, we have to be able to swap them out, and put in what's next, without disrupting the economics on the consumer end. Alternately, we could bank on the theory that they really are monopolistic, and are rigging the market to keep prices artificially high, such that their demise wouldn't pose any kind of economic problem. That's a big bet, because if it turns out we're wrong, a lot of people are going to suffer and struggle as a result of our miscalculation.
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@Clown Dream its not a "bet" at all. The history of industrial consolidation within the meat packing industry has been documented time an again including here in the NYT..
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The workers are underpaid, with poor conditions.
The ranchers are underpaid.
The customers are overcharged.
Where is all the money going?
- Oh yeah. To the shareholders.
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@MidtownATL Let's not forget CEOs, CFOs, or whatever the company calls their top dog/dogs. I'd agree about shareholders but unfortunately pensions went by the wayside for most of us and our retirements are married into the stock market. I'm 61 and admit to cringing every time the stock market goes down. Wish I didn't have to care.
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@MidtownATL ...and, the cattle aren't doing so well, either.
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@H Silk
"Let's not forget CEOs, CFOs, or whatever the company calls their top dog/dogs."
Sure. But they are the primary shareholders. They are mostly compensated with stock options, rather than W-2 wages.
Neo-feudalism. The new Gilded Age. The Robber Barons. The Lords and the Serfs.
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I’m vegan so very much appreciate almost all of the sentiments this article shares. I share them too. But I can’t help but think that with Covid easy to catch just about anywhere now, it’s hard to make that a central focus especially when the mother made the crucial mistake of not going to the hospital when she should have.
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@Lucy B Easier for some people to have access to services, health care, etc., It is a disgrace that this
poor women and the people in these plants have to
work in these conditions. The only "mistake" she made
was choosing to come to this country instead of one
that shows compassion to it's people.
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Unlike what the current top comment contends, the answer does indeed lie in unionization, but unions have their hands completely tied when attempting to win concessions.
Finland just last week was effectively shut down: nearly all port and import/export activity was stopped due to a single negotiating failure involving a forest industry company that was cutting corners on safety and committing wage theft. The allied Transport Workers’ Union AKT launched a strike, putting pressure not just on the company, but almost all Finnish companies. It’s a brilliant strategy, because not only does it pressure them as a strike normally does, but it forces businesses to keep -each other- in line.
It’s a brilliant strategy, and it’s also illegal in the United States.
In fact, most types of collective action is illegal, and there are virtually no protections against predatory tactics used by businesses such as attacking or threatening strikers and their families, and police often look the other way.
Unions are incredibly powerful and effective tools of democracy and hope for the working class. But America has over time developed one of the least union-friendly policy environments in the industrialized world.
Of course, this is America. Nothing will ever change for the better.
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@Shawn Where is it illegal for transport workers to strike? I have never heard of this.
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@Shawn Ever since Taft Hartley the Republican war on workers has been very effective.
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It’s not just Republicans. Hilary sat on the board of Walmart when Walmart was firing any worker who mentioned the word “union”. The only Democrats who ever stand with union workers are Sanders and AOC. And we all know how they are regarded by the corporate Dems.
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All over sudden, during one of the worse pandemics, meat packers are enjoying record profits?! Isn't it called price gouging? Should somebody be criminally prosecuted for profiteering during this crisis?
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@Marat their profit margins are still in the single-digits, something the reporters keep finding a way not to note. There’s no evidence of gouging.
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And there you have it. Inflation isn’t Joe, it’s corporate price-gouging plain and simple.
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@Nathan Hansard
Vote Republican. Complain about inflation. Blame Joe Biden.
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Yeah. It’s not the fault of big business for raising prices and garnering biggest profit margins in more than 70 years.
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Didn’t Sinclair Lewis uncover all that is bad with this industry? Did it really change? Are we headed to the future or the past?
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@John It was Upton Sinclair in "The Jungle (1906). Also love Sinclair Lewis, especially "Babbitt" (1922).
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@John It did change. But anti- union laws and Republican deregulation starting in 1981 have taken working Americans backwards more than a century.
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@Montreal'67
And things changed after ‘The Jungle’ in 1906. I’m pretty sure the change came under T. Roosevelt (R). Amazing how so many things have fallen apart.
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I own a hair salon in Atlanta and pay $15 and up to answer the phone, do laundry and make appointments. Come work for me! We can’t find enough workers and you don’t have to put your life on the line. Why don’t these people find something else in this moment of such low unemployment?
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@Renee You used the right question "why ?"; a question with, perhaps, a different answer for each worker - and overall, significant degrees of difficulty.
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@Renee Sometimes family ties or obligations that keep you in one place. Sometimes it's fear of the unknown. Sometimes people own homes in dying towns. If you've got years of equity in a house like that, with little hope of selling it, what do you do?
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@Renee because most of them don't live in Atlanta and never could afford too.
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Tin Aye died so that other of our fellow citizens could have the "freedom" to live unvaccinated and unmasked. Sadly, these tragedies will continue until the health and well being of our fellow citizens are more impotrtant to that freedom and corporate profit. Please keep bringing these stories to light.
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I remember the meat packing places in Green Bay, WI closing down in the beginning of COVID. Have things changed for workers? Have we even paid attention?
I admire my vegan daughters more and more every day.
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Anyone who opts out of the inhumane industrialised production of animal proteins deserves support and admiration. The hard part of vegetarianism or becoming vegan is not going without burgers, steaks or food-like, reformed chicken nuggets. That’s easy. What wears you down is continual harassment from carnivores. While occasional solace can be found in like-minded circles, if you have a normal family, social or professional life, any meal situation will be punctuated with ritualised anti-vegetarianism/veganism abuse. I’ve lost count the number of times that someone at the table, seeing my meat-free plate, will aggressively take some steak or pork from his own meal and place it on mine. Another favourite is to slander the vegetarian’s virility, or physical strength — that’s all too common. Thus, because I’m not eating meat, I am less a man. Over the years, this certainly played a role in the dynamic I experienced with co-workers, with in-laws, siblings, but also sentimental attachments. It’s a significant reason why, over the course of my adulthood, I withdrew socially. But back to your vegan daughters. They are living their lives true to what they believe, and doing no small part in making the world a better place. I wish them all the best.
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@MIMA I don't "admire" vegans at all, not one I know and I know a few isn't a liberal professional class "white" and wealthy individual or the "white" child of privileged. They live in mega mansions, drive high end and dreadfully expensive cars and regularly travel. They are obnoxious to the point of harassing those who disagree with them and they inhabit one of the most toxic regions of the internet. What prey tell is admirable about that. I also don't "admire" vegetarians but do respect the ones I know, they aren't strident or judgemental like vegan's. Finally the only carnivores I admire have wings, flippers or 4 legs and a tail. And vegans believe that they are "bad" and they need to be indoctrinated too. (don't believe? check the internet especially youth orientated sites or apps) The reason I don't "admire" human carnivores is because there aren't "any". We are not carnivores, wolves are, hawks are, whales are, we aren't, and if that is the strident vegan attitude that D Kowalsky takes to his time with others it may explain the reactions (which by the way are offensive and inexcusable) he gets. I admire people whose choices are not performative, who do not wear theirs on their sleeves and are not into the kind of shaming wealthy vegans like to do to people from other cultures. Oh and those whose choices are deliberative and informed which includes those of us whose meat / fish consumption (as well as fruits and veggies) is non industrial and local as possible.
Look, we all know that the US has not just allowed, but courted, monopolies. We all know that worker's rights are ignored. Just as we all know that consumer rights are being trampled. If it raises the stock market value, it is golden. Even I have to look at the market performance, because that is how I can pay to live after I retire.
The workers are unionized, so the answer doesn't lie there.
The answer lies in legislation, enforcement of the law that protects workers, consumers, and people who provide service and value, like the ranchers.
So far, states have been unable to break the deadlock of the idiocracy of their state and federal elections. Elect clowns, get circuses. It's really about how long people can go uneducated, unaware of the results of their votes - or of staying home.
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Seems like one of common threads from meat, to coal, to health insurance, to common sense gun regulations, to monopolies -you name it- is the lobbyist’s influence on our politicians. Get that money out of elections and all of the sudden politicians have to start listening to the people rather than big business.
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From the root of campaign finance reform a beautiful nation focused on investing in our people could grow. But without focusing on this root issue, our nation is withering as all the nutrients are flowing only to the wealthiest and most privileged.
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@Cathy ~
"The workers are unionized, so the answer doesn't lie there."
Why isn't part of the solution there? Why doesn't the union negotiate better/safer working conditions for its members?
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I am so glad I don't eat meat. It is an inhumane industry towards their workers and the animals.
I am surprised workers give out their name. What backlash to come.
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@DLN It isn't just the meat industry. Every aspect of our industrial food production system treats workers the same.
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@McGivens And it isn't just the food industry. All industries exist to make money, the more the better. The employees involved are simply replaceable cogs in the machine.
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3 billion paid out in dividends. 6 thousand for a worker’s funeral. While ranchers go broke. What is it exactly about this version of capitalism that Republicans don’t seem to get? Love that ‘stock’ market, but not…this one.
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@Jo Williams This is EXACTLY the kind of capitalism Republicans have worked tirelessly to create. A small wealthy elite using the American workforce as their personal vassals, their own wage-slaves. We the People are as expendable to them as a used tissue.
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@John sadly the Democratic Party has also worked quite tirelessly to these ends— it’s the common philosophy of neoliberalism. See NAFTA, repeal of Glass-seagal, the endless prioritizing of Wall Street over Main Street (let us not forget that H Clinton was on the board of Walmart), the unwillingness to actually address the massive lobbying influence of these industries, etc
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@Jo Williams
If you’re that old do you still remember what it was like prior to Ronald Reagan?
Trickle Down Economic Theory has provided the ruination of the middle class.
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Inhuman but that’s nothing new. I don’t eat animals I like and cows, swine, sheep and goats are some of them. But I do make the best black bean burger along with fries. I wonder how human meat would look on a hook.
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