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Jun 17, 2021 · Four companies slaughtered about 85% of U.S. grain-fattened cattle that are made into steaks, beef roasts and other cuts of meat for consumers in 2018, according to the most recent data from the U ...
Jul 14, 2021 · September 8, 2021 update: The Biden administration today published a briefing rounding up the impacts of meat-industry consolidation on individuals’ grocery bills, and laid out the programs and policies the administration is using to try to break up the Big Four companies’ control of the meat processing market in the U.S., including support for smaller producers and direct payment to ...
Sep 15, 2023 · Journalist Chloe Sorvino’s debut book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat, reveals the shortcomings and failures of the United States meat industry and offers concrete solutions for a better way forward. “This book really is the inside look at how billionaires and large global corporations ...
- Recommendations
- Methodology
- I. Background
- II. Workers’ Health and Safety
- III. Risks Fueled by Rapid Work Speed
- IV. The Way Forward
- V. International Human Rights Law
- Acknowledgments
To the US Department of Labor
1. Conduct a comprehensive rule-making effort regarding a work speed standard for meat and poultry slaughtering and processing establishments to reduce work speed to levels commensurate with worker health and safety. 2. Conduct a comprehensive rule-making effort regarding a standard on best practices and airborne exposure limits for common chemicals used for sanitation and antimicrobial purposes in poultry and meat slaughtering and processing plants, such as peracetic acid (PAA), to reduce ex...
To the US Department of Agriculture
1. Stop issuing waivers for poultry slaughtering and processing establishments to operate slaughter lines at speeds in excess of the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s rule-making on maximum line speeds (9 CFR 381.69(a)). 2. Stop pursuing regulatory efforts to lift maximum slaughter line speed caps in the poultry, hog, and cattle industry. Particularly, stop pursuing the proposed rule, Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection (83 FR 4780). 3. Assure that the Food Safety and Inspection Se...
To the US Congress
1. Allocate sufficient resources to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration to fulfill its mandate to assure safe and healthful working conditions through meaningful and effective inspections and oversight of establishments across industries in the United States. 2. Pass a law authorizing the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration to re-promulgate an ergonomics standard. 3. Pass the POWER Act (Protecting our Workers from Exploitatio...
This report is based on research conducted between September 2018 and May 2019. Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with 49 current and former meat and poultry slaughtering and processing plant workers, and also interviewed 53 professionals with relevant experience and expertise on issues discussed in this report, including community organizati...
Each year, at thousands of factories across the United States, workers kill and disassemble tens of millions of cattle, hundreds of millions of pigs, and over nine billion chickens.Across the Southeast and Midwest, tractor-trailers loaded with chickens, hogs, or cattle stream into large factories along rural stretches of highway from nearby farms. ...
Workers in the meat and poultry industry labor in environments where workspaces are often refrigerator-cold or excessively hot, cramped, coated with grease and blood, and filled with deafening noise and the smell of dead animals or overpowering chemicals. Workers are regularly exposed to industrial equipment, stressful repetitive motions, sharp-edg...
Nearly all workers who spoke with Human Rights Watch identified the same factor that compounds their risk of injury and illness: speed. “It’s like a storm,” said John D., a worker at a beef plant in Nebraska. “The speed of the line is fast, fast.” For decades, federal studies, medical literature, and workers’ surveys have found that rapid work spee...
Regulate and Improve Oversight
The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should enact relevant, binding standards to protect workers from the abuses to health and safety documented in this report, particularly concerning ergonomic hazards, exposure to chemicals commonly used in the industry, and work speeds. OSHA has issued non-binding guidelines for the industry concerning some of these issues.However, as documented in this report, and in decades of reporting on the risks to workers’ h...
The issues addressed in this report implicate a range of basic rights protected under international law, including: the right to safe and healthy working conditions, including a right to a working environment free from violence and harassment, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to sanitation, and the right to equal pr...
This report was researched and written by Matt McConnell, Stanford Law School International Postgraduate Public Interest Fellow in the Business and Human Rights Division and United States Program of Human Rights Watch. It was reviewed and edited by Komala Ramachandra, senior researcher in the Business and Human Rights Division, and Grace Meng, seni...
Jun 14, 2021 · O n the morning of May 25, 2019, a food-safety inspector at a Cargill meatpacking plant in Dodge City, Kansas, came across a disturbing sight. In an area of the plant called the stack, a Hereford ...
May 20, 2020 · The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the underlying flaws in many of America’s most iconic industries. In times of stability and abundance, we have staked our national identity on our ability to ...
People also ask
Who makes the most beef in the United States?
Are cattle ranchers worried about a beef company from another country?
Why do large multinational corporations dominate the US meat & poultry industry?
How concentrated is the US beef sector?
Who owns National Beef?
Is the meat & poultry processing industry against its economic interests?
Dec 18, 2019 · National Beef Packing Company, the fourth largest beef processor in the United States, is now approximately 80% owned by a company from another nation. That has some cattle ranchers worried. In November, the Brazilian-owned meatpacker Marfrig Global Foods S.A. announced it would acquire 31% of National Beef from New York City-based investment bank Jefferies Financial Group for $970 million.
