poultry plants
cmonforton | September 24, 2012[Update below, 9/26/2012]
When Secretary of Agricultural Tom Vilsack announced in January the USDA's proposal to modernize the poultry slaughter inspection system, he promised several things. He said the new system would save taxpayers and poultry producers money while improving food safety. (In "The Age of Greed," law professor Rena Steinzor explains on whose backs those savings are borne.) Secretary Vilsack also insisted that USDA inspectors
"will continue to conduct on-line carcass-by-carcass inspection as mandated by law."
That requirement is a long-standing provision of the Poultry…
cmonforton | May 31, 2012The Obama Administration's quest to appease business interests' claims about burdensome and outdated regulations awoke a giant in the form of the civil rights, public health and workers' safety communities. From the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Council of LaRaza, to the American Public Health Association and Nebraska Appleseed, the feedback is loud and clear: USDA should withdraw the regulatory changes it proposed in January (77 Fed Reg 4408) which would shift the responsibility for examining and sorting poultry carcasses with obvious defects from USDA inspectors to the…
cmonforton | April 26, 2012Gabriel Thompson writes today in The Nation about a summer job he had a few years back, working on the assembly line at a Pilgrim's Pride poultry plant in Alabama. The chickens flew by on hooks at 90 birds-per-minute as he sliced and cut the meat non-stop. It didn't take long for him to meet co-workers who suffered from painful and debilitating musculoskeletal disorders caused by the high-speed, repetitive work. Thompson writes:
"One was unable to hold a glass of water; another had three surgeries on her wrists; a third had discovered, after a visit to the doctor, that her thumb joint had…