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The Perdue Farms hen and poultry processing manufacturing facility in Salisbury, Md., pictured on Might 2, 2020.
Eric Baradat/AFP through Getty Photos
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Eric Baradat/AFP through Getty Photos
The Perdue Farms hen and poultry processing manufacturing facility in Salisbury, Md., pictured on Might 2, 2020.
Eric Baradat/AFP through Getty Photos
The Labor Division is investigating Perdue Farms and Tyson Meals — two of the most important poultry producers within the U.S. — after stories that migrant youngsters as younger as 13 have been working in a single day shifts to scrub the businesses’ crops.
The division advised NPR that its Wage and Hour Division is wanting into the matter and couldn’t present further particulars.
The inquiry comes after The New York Times Magazine printed final week a harrowing account of a 14-year-old boy, Marcos Cux, whose arm was practically torn off whereas working at a Perdue slaughterhouse on the Japanese Shore of Virginia.
In keeping with the Instances, Cux was employed by one in every of Perdue’s contractors tasked with cleansing operations. He and different center and excessive school-aged youngsters made up a couple of third of the in a single day shifts on the plant — dealing with acid and strain hoses to clean away blood and meat scraps from industrial machines.
Underneath federal regulation, these duties are strictly off limits for anybody below 18 due to the inherent dangers. Cux admitted to mendacity about his age to get the job however the Instances reported that it was a open secret amongst employees on the facility. The identical practices have been occurring at a close-by Tyson-run plant.
Perdue spokesperson Andrea Staub confirmed the corporate is conscious of the federal investigation and stated it plans to cooperate.
“We take the authorized employment and security of every particular person working in our amenities very significantly and have strict, longstanding insurance policies in place for Perdue associates to forestall minors from working hazardous jobs in violation of the regulation,” Staub stated in an announcement.
She added that Perdue can also be conducting a “third-party audit of kid labor prevention and safety procedures” that features its contractors.
In the meantime, Tyson Meals stated it was not conscious of any investigation as of Monday afternoon and subsequently declined to remark.
The federal inquiry comes about seven months after the Biden administration vowed to crack down on unlawful baby labor within the nation. In February, the Labor Division imposed a $1.5 million fine on Packers Sanitation Providers Inc., one of many nation’s largest cleansing companies for meat crops, for hiring minors. On the time, the division didn’t pursue meals companies, together with Tyson, that had benefited from underage labor.
In keeping with knowledge from the Labor Department, baby labor violations have practically quadrupled since a low level in 2015 — resulting in extra accidents and deaths on the job. In July, 16-year-old Duvan Robert Tomas Perez died after getting entangled in a machine he was cleansing at a Mar-Jac poultry plant in Mississippi. In 2020, 16-year-old Gustavo Ramirez was doing development work on a lodge roof in Tennessee when he fell 160 ft and died.
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