Saturday, June 15, 2013

The return to the jungle

At the turn of the 20th century Upton Sinclair wrote a novel called “The Jungle" exposing the degradation of workers poverty and their wage slavery in Chicago’s meat industry. However, it was not the near inhuman conditions of the workers that provoked an outcry but instead it was the book’s revelations about the disgusting standards of hygiene and adulteration in the slaughter-houses and packing sheds. It led to government public health regulation and food inspection laws. Not too much has changed these days. We still face health and safety threats from what we eat and many of the hazards are still  concentrated in the slaughterhouses and processing plants where corporations regularly subordinate workers’ health and safety to their insatiable hunger for profits.

A 2011 petition filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights and Nebraska Appleseed described the unsavory conditions that U.S. meat-processing workers face every day:
“Processors require their line employees to work at an extremely fast pace to keep up with these demands. The work is performed in very dangerous conditions: floors are slippery with grease, blood, and fat; temperatures are extremely cold or hot, and the work is arduous and repetitive—employees make upwards of 20,000 cuts a day.”

In a 2012 report on labor conditions in the livestock industry by the Midwest Coalition, an Iowa plant worker testified:
 “Many workers are harmed, there is [not] enough time to do our tasks, the speed is so fast and we have to stretch ourselves to do the pieces. We are always working beyond the capacity of our bodies.”

Health hazards are intensified by a shop-floor culture that exploits and disempowers workers. Union membership has been plummeting since the 1980s. With low wages and massive stress, the sector relies heavily on immigrant workers, who may often be intimidated and silenced by the threat of being unfairly punished or fired for speaking out on health and safety problems. On top of abuse and harassment from bosses, repetitive-stress injuries are prevalent in poultry plants, often leading to debilitating chronic pain that makes workers' lives miserable.

 Under such conditions, should consumers be shocked that food quality is endangered, too? These same factories and slaughterhouses have brought us arsenic-laced chicken and livestock laden with antibiotic-resistant pathogens. A recent USDA Inspector General report on pork plants found that regulators frequently failed to adequately enforce safety standards, while many facilities were cited for issues like mishandling hogs during slaughter, fecal contamination and pest-infested “kill floors.”

Tom O’Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, says the safety implications for the food produced in these plants should concern everyone. "It stands to reason that in a workplace where there's a high level of pressure on workers to work as fast and to not report hazards, the same thing can happen in terms of quality control or food quality...As competition around the world in this industry grows, that just puts more pressure on American-based companies, whoever owns them,” O’Connor says. “They're going to have to really watch their bottom lines and tighten up even more, and have work sped up even more... the global race to the bottom."

This disconnect between food quality and workers’ health reflects a profound regulatory gap, not only because unhealthy workplaces may lead to unhealthy meat, but because safe workplaces protect public health.

The USDA has sought to “modernize” safety monitoring by essentially removing many inspectors from the lines and instead having plant workers perform visual quality checks, while using antimicrobial chemicals to help sanitize birds. At the same time, the proposed scheme would pump production by allowing faster processing speeds. So while workers cut up carcasses, whipping past them at a rate of up to 175 a minute, they are supposed to watch for unhealthy-looking chickens simultaneously. Studies on pilots of this program have revealed alarming rates of error in catching unsanitary birds. But consumers should also be alarmed about the greater danger experienced by workers as production reaches even more insane speeds, supposedly for greater efficiency. The USDA’s proposed reforms essentially do not contemplate their implications for worker safety.

Labor rights are a critical ingredient for a healthy food system. In many cases, the presence of a union could provide a critical supportive workplace climate for calling out safety and health problems. Jackie Nowell, health and safety director of the United Food and Commercial Workers, says:
“It's still pretty brutal conditions no matter what plant you go in. But people can get to the doctor, people can report the hazards, and they can report their injuries in a much freer atmosphere in a union plant."

Consumers have every right to know whether their food is safe to eat and to know what is on the label But  anxieties about diseased and GM foods are linked to the working conditions of all those workers who bring the food to our supermarket shelves and tables.

 Little has changed from Upton Sinclair’s times in regards to the workers.

Adapted from here 

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