DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 6:00 pm
The Nebraska Appleseed Center called Wednesday for government regulation requiring meatpacking companies to slow down their production lines.
Swift-moving production lines processing 400 head of cattle per hour are the major cause of worker injuries and put food safety at risk, said Milo Mumgaard, executive director of the public policy center.
“The simple truth is that it all happens too fast,” he said.
Mumgaard urged Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns to “require the industry to slow down.”
It is Johanns’ job to “ensure our hamburgers — and the workers who process them — are as safe as they can be,” Mumgaard said. “Slowing down the line is a great place to start.”
Johanns declined comment.
When he was Nebraska’s governor in 2000, Johanns issued a meatpacking workers bill of rights to inform workers of their legal rights and monitor working conditions in Nebraska’s packing plants.
An estimated 20,000 workers are employed in Nebraska packing plants. The work force is largely composed of Hispanic immigrants.
In an evaluation of the bill of rights issued Wednesday, Appleseed said it represented a good first step in creating “a framework for collaboration,” but needs to be buttressed now by regulation.
“Federal oversight of health and safety in meatpacking plants is at an all-time low,” the report stated, “with no regulation of the exhausting speed of work, which also affects food safety.”
Janet Riley, spokesperson for the American Meat Institute in Washington, D.C., disputed Appleseed’s conclusions.
Line speed already is regulated by U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors, she said.
“Inspectors are in our plants every minute we operate and they are fully empowered to take action” if line speed adversely affects food safety, Riley said.
Production lines are allowed to move only at a speed that “permits compliance with federal rules,” she said.
“It’s not so much the speed of the line,” she said, but whether the production line is adequately crewed.
AMI represents the nation’s major meatpackers and processors.
Tyson Foods spokesman Gary Mickelson said: “Appropriate staffing for a production line is set by industrial engineers who conduct studies to determine the number of people needed to safely, yet effectively, process certain product mixes.”
Key factors in establishing staffing levels are “protecting the safety of our team members as well as the quality of our products,” Mickelson said.
Tyson has large packing plants in Dakota City, Madison and Lexington as well as other meat processing operations in Nebraska.
The industry continues to be “highly dangerous,” the Appleseed report stated, with injury rates more than double that of all U.S. manufacturing plants.
Injury rates appear to be underreported at meatpacking plants “due to fear of retaliation and job loss,” Appleseed stated, citing a federal Government Accountability Office report.
Workers compensation rights remain “greatly underutilized,” Appleseed said.
Riley said the Appleseed report relied on outdated worker injury and illness statistics.
Working in alliance with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and in cooperation with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the industry has “significantly and consistently” reduced worker injuries and illnesses, Riley said.
The Appleseed report was issued in conjuction with an advance news media screening in Lincoln of the new film, “Fast Food Nation,” based on the 2001 book by Eric Schlosser.
The film by Richard Linklater will open in theaters nationwide this weekend.
The Nebraska meatpacking workers bill of rights was initiated by Johanns after a 1999 Lincoln Journal Star report on working conditions for a largely Hispanic immigrant work force in an Omaha meatpacking plant.
In its evaluation, Appleseed said the bill of rights “serves an indispensable policy role,” but needs to be communicated more effectively to individual workers and incorporated in company orientation and training procedures.
Unfortunately, Appleseed stated, the bill of rights “has done little on the ground” to guarantee improved access to workers compensation, a safer and healthier workplace and workers’ freedom to organize.
“Fear of losing their job still inhibits many workers from inquiring about, let alone asserting, their basic rights,” the Appleseed report stated.
“Meatpacking must slow down,” Mumgaard said.
“Slowing the line in the packing house will mean fewer injuries. Slowing the line will mean that fewer consumers will get sick or die from e coli poisoning.
“And slowing the line will mean fewer mass recalls and a more economically healthy industry,” Mumgaard said.
Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.
Major recommendations:
— Staff and funding for federal and state safety oversight and enforcement should be significantly increased.
— Oversight should include regulation and slowing of production line speeds by USDA, OSHA and state regulators.
— State funding and public subsidies for the meatpacking industry in Nebraska should go only to “those employers who are complying with the basic rights and community standards enumerated in the meatpacking workers bill of rights.”
— State funding should be provided to elevate the Nebraska administrator of the workers bill of rights to a full-time position and add two state inspector positions.