Broadening Slaughterhouse Inspections
On September 3, 1991, a fire erupted inside a poultry plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Footnote #1 content: John Drescher, The Forgotten Lessons of the Hamlet Fire, THE ASSEMBLY (Sept. 1, 2021), https:// www.theassemblync.com/politics/the-forgotten-lessons-of-the-hamlet-fire/ [https://perma.cc/5HH2- J6FD]. Workers ran for the exits, but they were trapped by doors locked from the outside, without sprinklers or an evacuation plan. Footnote #2 content: Id. Twenty-five workers died. Footnote #3 content: Id. In the eleven years that the plant was in operation, a worker safety inspector had never visited. Footnote #4 content: Id.; Anna Diamond, The Deadly 1991 Hamlet Fire Exposed the High Cost of “Cheap,” SMITHSONIAN MAG. (Sept. 8, 2017), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deadly-1991-hamlet- f ire-exposed-high-cost-cheap-180964816/ [https://perma.cc/6GHU-TGFG]. In contrast, a meat safety inspector had been there every day and had approved locking a door, ostensibly to keep flies out. Footnote #5 content: Drescher, supra note 1. Conflict between overlapping regulatory systems had deadly consequences in 1991, and similar conflicts continue to regularly occur. Slaughterhouses contain two radically different safety regimes: one for meat, and another for workers. This Note compares the ever-present inspections performed by the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the never-present inspections of the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Both inspection regimes fall short. To improve them, Congress should require FSIS meat inspectors in slaughterhouses to identify and enforce violations of federal workplace safety laws. The American meat Footnote #6 content: In this Note, meat refers to both poultry (such as chicken, turkey, and duck) and the things traditionally included in the definition of meat (such as beef, pork, and mutton). industry was in crisis during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Footnote #7 content: Jodi Schwan, Smithfield to Close Sioux Falls Plant Indefinitely, SIOUXFALLS.BUS., https://www. siouxfalls.business/smithfield-to-close-sioux-falls-plant-indefinitely/ [https://perma.cc/EQQ2-72NN] (last visited Dec. 30, 2024). In the second week of April 2020, Smithfield, the largest pork processor in the country, closed a plant in South Dakota because of COVID-19. Footnote #8 content: Seth Millstein, The Top Pork Producer in the U.S. Is Owned by China, But Harming Local Communities, SENTIENT MEDIA (Feb. 26, 2024), https://sentientmedia.org/top-pork-producing-states/ [https://perma.cc/CK3W-H8J9]; Schwan, supra note 7. That plant accounted for approximately 4%–5% of U.S. pork production. Footnote #9 content: Schwan, supra note 7. During the week of April 25, 2020, production of beef, pork, and chicken declined by 13%, compared to the same week one year prior. Footnote #10 content: JOEL L. GREENE, CONG. RSCH. SERV., IN11366, COVID-19 DISRUPTS U.S. MEAT SUPPLY; PRODUCER PRICES TUMBLE 2–3 (2020). Meat prices for producers cratered soon after. Footnote #11 content: See id. Producer prices for beef, pork, and chicken each declined by 10%, 18%, and 29%, respectively. Id. at 2. Following public outcry and pressure from elected officials, the President issued an executive order designating the meat and poultry supply chain as critical infrastructure, forcing them to remain open. Footnote #12 content: Exec. Order No. 13917, 85 Fed. Reg. 26313 (Apr. 28, 2020); see also Hoeven Statement on Guidance Providing Flexibility to Meat Processing Facilities: Senator Worked with Agriculture Secretary to Help Maintain Food Supply Chain, Keep Facilities Operating Safely, U.S. SENATOR FOR N.D. JOHN HOEVEN (Apr. 27, 2020), https://www.hoeven.senate.gov/news/news-releases/hoeven- statement-on-guidance-providing-flexibility-to-meat-processing-facilities1 [https://perma.cc/S425-U9T6] (urging administration officials to work toward guidance to keep meat processing facilities open and safe amidst COVID-19). There is evidence that the meatpacking industry drafted the executive order in order to keep processing plants open. Footnote #13 content: Michael Grabell & Bernice Yeung, Emails Show the Meatpacking Industry Drafted an Executive Order to Keep Plants Open, PROPUBLICA (Sept. 14, 2020, 2:43 PM), https://www.propublica.org/article/ emails-show-the-meatpacking-industry-drafted-an-executive-order-to-keep-plants-open [https://perma. cc/ZPS9-Z2ZW]. In 2020, OSHA received over 100 complaints related to meatpacking facilities, but it issued just nine citations in response. Footnote #14 content: Memorandum from the Majority Staff to the Members of the Select Subcomm. on the Coronavirus Crisis 11 (Oct. 27, 2021), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21093338-20211027-meatpacking- report [https://perma.cc/CHY3-97GN] [hereinafter Memorandum from Majority Staff]. Meanwhile, managers at Tyson, the largest chicken processor in the country, made bets on how many employees would get sick. Footnote #15 content: Laurel Wamsley, Tyson Foods Fires 7 Plant Managers Over Betting Ring on Workers Getting COVID-19, NPR (Dec. 16, 2020, 5:30 PM), https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/ 2020/12/16/947275866/tyson-foods-fires-7-plant-managers-over-betting-ring-on-workers-getting-covid-19 [https://perma.cc/F8AF-TZMD]. Nearly 60,000 workers in meatpacking plants contracted COVID-19, and hundreds died. Footnote #16 content: Memorandum from Majority Staff, supra note 14, at 6. Between March 1, 2020 and February 1, 2021, at least 269 workers in meatpacking plants died from COVID-19. Id.; see also Sky Chadde, Tracking COVID-19’s Impact on Meatpacking Workers and Industry, INVESTIGATE MIDWEST (Apr. 16, 2020), https://investigatemidwest.org/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19s-impact-on-meatpacking-workers- and-industry [https://perma.cc/5546-FDKH] (finding that there have been 423 reported worker deaths across 29 states since April 2020). By May 2020, four USDA meat inspectors had died. Footnote #17 content: Kelly Struthers Montford & Tessa Wotherspoon, The Contagion of Slow Violence: The Slaughterhouse and COVID-19, 10 ANIMAL STUD. J. 80, 95 (2021). During a national meat shortage, worker safety became a footnote. Footnote #18 content: See Michael Corkery, David Yaffe-Bellany & Derek Kravitz, As Meatpacking Plants Reopen, Data About Worker Illness Remains Elusive, N.Y. TIMES (Sept. 30, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/ 2020/05/25/business/coronavirus-meatpacking-plants-cases.html (discussing executive order issued to keep meatpacking plants open, which did not address proper COVID-19 testing for employees). This Note is not about the COVID-19 crises in American slaughterhouses; it is about the crises that the pandemic revealed. The appalling events that happened within the industry during the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing failures, demonstrated by the 1991 Hamlet fire, to keep workers safe. Footnote #19 content: In this respect, meat processing plants resembled prisons, jails, and tribal reservations—places where longstanding health inequities existed long before the pandemic, with deadly consequences when COVID-19 hit. See Victoria Law, Health Care in Jails and Prisons Is Terrible. The Pandemic Made It Even Worse, VOX (June 28, 2022, 7:00 AM), https://www.vox.com/23175978/health-care-prison-jail- covid-pandemic [https://perma.cc/KMW9-CZPF]; Gloria Oladipo, Native American Communities Lashed by Covid, Worsening Chronic Inequities, GUARDIAN (Dec. 13, 2021, 5:00 AM), https://www. theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/13/pandemic-challenges-native-american-communities [https:// perma.cc/L82T-BT5N]. These events also demonstrate the vast power disparity between slaughterhouse workers and their employers, as well as the need for change. In 2020, the country prioritized meat over worker safety, just as it had in response to Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle. Sinclair famously chronicled a fictional immigrant worker’s hardship—including violence, abuse, and low pay—while working for a meat processing company in Chicago. Footnote #20 content: UPTON SINCLAIR, THE JUNGLE 246–47 (Simon & Brown 2012) (1906). The novel was published in a socialist magazine, and Sinclair hoped that it would garner opposition to “wage slavery.” Footnote #21 content: Christopher Klein, How Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ Led to US Food Safety Reforms, HISTORY (May 10, 2023), https://www.history.com/news/upton-sinclair-the-jungle-us-food-safety-reforms [https:// perma.cc/YA5N-XUYN]. Instead of inspiring a public outrage against abusive working conditions, Sinclair’s novel sparked an outcry against stomach- turning food processes. Footnote #22 content: Id. The Jungle led to federal investigations and ultimately federal laws, including the Federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, which created the Food and Drug Administration and the general framework that regulates food in the United States today. Footnote #23 content: Id. Linking FSIS and OSHA inspections is not a new idea. In 1994, in the aftermath of the Hamlet fire, the two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate and train meat inspectors to recognize and report OSHA violations and otherwise resolve tensions between the two regulatory systems. Footnote #24 content: OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY & HEALTH ADMIN., U.S. DEP’T OF LAB., MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION AND THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE (1994), https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/mou/1994-02-04 [https://perma.cc/5BQN-5D2N]. That MOU has failed. A governmental report issued more than twenty years after the MOU was enacted found that it had not been fully implemented. Footnote #25 content: U.S. GOV’T ACCOUNTABILITY OFF., GAO-18-12, BETTER OUTREACH, COLLABORATION, AND INFORMATION NEEDED TO HELP PROTECT WORKERS AT MEAT AND POULTRY PLANTS 34 (2017). This Note proposes a statutory amendment to require FSIS inspectors to report OSHA violations, and to subject inspectors to oversight from both the Departments of Agriculture and Labor. This proposal would not be a panacea for all the ills of modern slaughterhouse work and would be most effective if paired with other reforms. However, requiring FSIS inspectors to report OSHA violations could meaningfully make workers safer. Embedding worker safety within the FSIS inspection regime would realize the promise of the 1994 MOU by forcing agency action. Enacting this proposal would force the federal government to take a more holistic approach to food safety and strengthen worker safety enforcement for a vulnerable workforce. The Note begins with a discussion of FSIS’s and OSHA’s histories, practices, and challenges in Parts I and II, respectively. Part III outlines a potential reform: amending the statute to require FSIS inspectors to enforce violations of worker safety in slaughterhouses. This reform would address areas of overlap and tension between worker safety and food safety rules and enhance protections for a particularly vulnerable workforce. Part IV addresses counterarguments related to agency capture, overburdening inspectors, and constitutional challenges. Finally, the Note contextualizes this proposal alongside other proposals to improve modern meatpacking and concludes.
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