Introduction
The United States is experiencing great challenges concerning the food industry. The essay will put more emphasis on the slaughter houses. In the United States, there are around ten billions of animals slaughtered every year in 5,700 slaughter houses and processing plants and employs around 527,000workers. This includes approximately 1,100 federally inspected slaughter houses. Most are where the slaughter and processing facilities, where the animals are killed and processed i.e. cut up, skinned, boned, salted and canned. The major animals slaughtered are classified into two namely:
- Livestock’s, which includes cow, pig, sheep, and goats.
- Poultry, which includes the chickens, turkeys and rabbits.
Workers welfare
The slaughtering of the animal and processing is a dangerous industry where the company profits take priority over workers rights. U.S endless goal of higher volume and greater efficiency led to fall in the workers safety every day. The failure by the Federal and states agencies that ensures the safety and the healthy working environment have thoroughly failed to enforce the general basic labor laws for workers protection. This has resulted to the basic rights and interest of the workers being compromised (Brester, 2002). This causes the animals to greatly suffer due the negligence of the corporations in the food industry creating laws and regulation to be followed when carrying out slaughtering.
Slaughter houses like the other agriculture division, people are mostly from low income communities. Historically these are mostly the African American. Approximately 38% of the slaughterhouse workers were born outside the U.S. The high turnover in the industry has lead top employment of undocumented workers (Brester, 2002). Furthermore, the industry provides the incentives for the current workers to recruit family and friends. Most workers have no skills thus they are easily fired at supervisors discretion. This state of work force discourages the workers from reporting the safety concern, injuries and other major issues because of fear of termination of the employment. The supervisor in this industry uses intimidation tactics to oppress the workers as there is readily available workforce to replace them. This makes the workers to accept the bad and demeaning working environment if they want to remain employed. The lack of correct measures and laws governing the industry has led to fall in the slaughter houses. Inefficiency and ineffectiveness only lead to failure of the industry.
Safety hazards
U.S and international labor laws are created in a means to ensure the safety and healthy working conditions free from any hazards. Workers who work for a long time in slaughter houses are usually exposed to solemn safety peril in their workplace. Most of the injuries as well as deaths that these individuals experience are extremely analogous to those first exposed to the general public in the United States”. For a long time, the industry has constantly operated with some of the highest injuries in the nation. This is extremely challenging following the verity that state and federal labor agencies have not been able to set up and put in force labor laws to prevent known danger from the workplace (Brester, 2002). However due to compromising conditions of the working environment of the slaughter houses, it has led to deteriorating working conditions each day even though the employee are aware of the safer alternatives. The poor measures in the industry have led to fall in the slaughter house over time.
Speed of slaughtering
The major workers injuries are caused due t the speed at which the animals are killed and processed. Due to the failure in the industry, workers are pressured to kill more animals in less time. This line speed causes many injuries. Slaughter houses operate nearly 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Slaughter houses workers are made to feel unworthy as they know the conditions are unsafe. Furthermore, they know there are other kinds of manufacturing industries that are extremely influential in guarantying secure working conditions and authorize workers to shut down machinery when they feel conditions are unsafe to continue their operations. As one worker stated that “the speed in the line is so fast that there is no time to sharpen the knife. The knife gets blunt and one has to cut harder. It is at this point that it begins to hurt, and that’s when you cut yourself.” (Kenner, 2011).This high and tiresome condition for working has led to the fall in slaughter houses.
Lack of freedom of association
Advancement technology has led to automation and thus transformed the various industries. This has eliminated the need of highly skilled laborers. The food industry has chosen to abandon the unions in the favor of the available cheap disposable workforce. This has resulted to the workers increasingly difficult to exercise their rights and privileges. A comprehensive research report on the human rights watch indicated that many workers who initiate trade unions and negotiate collectively are spied on, and if found guilty that are suspended or warned severely on their right of freedom of association. The slaughter houses are deprived of their freedom of association. This has contributed to the fall in the industry due to workers looking for better employment where he or she feels secure (Gregory, 2007).
The problem of lack of freedom should be addressed through the union. The union has the powers to fights for the rights of the workers. The unions can call meetings and look for workers remedy to existing challenge of lack of freedom of association.
Workers quality of life
Slaughter houses workers struggle to live above poverty level in order to provide a better quality of life to their families. The workers are thus forced to work for longer hours in the most dangerous working conditions in the country for lower wage. Furthermore, female workers also endure the acts of sexual harassment done by the co-workers and supervisors. This causes the workers to be in state of pain and feels disrespected and underappreciated. In the cases of undocumented workers, they are added anxiety and stress due to constant threat of deportation. Psychological effects of working in the slaughter house as result of killing animals routinely while still conscious have greatly always tormented the workers of the slaughter house.
Long working hours and repetitive stress
Long continuous working hours and stress have greatly contributed to the risk of injuries. The workers commonly suffer chronic pains in the hands, back and shoulders. This repetitive injuries are unavoidable under the pace I which the workers operate in slaughter houses. The situation is worse of when the workers are mandatory forced to work overtime. According to one of the employees in the slaughter houses, he stated that, “The last hour of a regular shift is hard. You are tired and it is difficult to contemplate. Later they request you to operate two overtime hours. That’s when it becomes absolutely dangerous.” (Kenner, 2011).This clearly shows the working conditions in the slaughter house are worse that what people would have expected. This difficulty working conditions has led to fall in number of slaughter houses over the time.
Lower reporting of the number of injuries
Many injuries are not reported in the slaughter house. Workers fear to report the injuries as they may be fired. This is because many corporations’ pays supervisors some bonuses for reducing the operating expenses incurred on workers claiming for compensation due to the injury caused to them. Example at one of the facility visited by the Food Empowerment Project, it reported that there were no injuries in the whole month (O'Rourke and Smith, 1981). This could not be true as the working conditions are poor to be injury free.
How to improve above challenges
The state of the slaughter houses in the meet –processing industry is as results of failure of state and federal regulatory agencies in protecting. Furthermore there is also greed on the part of corporations that are enacted to ensure health and safety of workers is adhered to (Phillips, 2009).
There is need to gain firsthand knowledge into the struggles these workers endure. The state and Federal labor agencies should be instituted to enforce the labor laws to prevent the hazards that are common in the slaughter houses. Strict actions should also be set in place to ensure workers are not intimidated by supervisors. The law concerning such actions should be clear and precise. Supervisors fear for strict consequences he can expose to will make him to act fairly.
Works Cited
Brester, Gary W.. "The Impacts On U.S. And Canadian Slaughter And Feeder Cattle Prices Of A U.S. Import Tariff On Canadian Slaughter Cattle." Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 50.1 (2002): 51-66. Print.
Grandin, Temple. Livestock handling and transport. 3. ed. Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2007. Print.
Gregory, Neville G.. Animal welfare and meat production. 2. ed. Wallingford [u.a.: CABI Pub, 2007. Print.
Kenner, Robert . "Food Inc, - YouTube."YouTube. N.p., 17 Sept. 2008. Web. 25 Sept. 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f69TUDbPdLs
O'Rourke, A. Desmond, and W. Smith Greig. "Estimates Of Consumer Loss Due To Monopoly In The U.S. Food-Manufacturing Industries: Comment."American Journal of Agricultural Economics 63.2 (1981): 285. Print.
Phillips, C. J. C.. The welfare of animals the silent majority. Netherlands?: Springer, 2009. Print.
