The U.S. Department of Agriculture tried to increase line speeds in chicken processing plants during the Obama administration, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration objected, because of dangers to workers in an already dangerous industry—the industry with the highest rate of finger amputations and higher rates of injury than coal mines or construction. But under Donald Trump, things are about to get much worse, ProPublica’s Isaac Arnsdorf reports. Rather than trying to pass a new regulation increasing line speeds in poultry processing plants, the USDA is just going to grant waivers to any company that asks for it, no matter how bad its safety record.
In fact, the USDA won’t even look at safety in granting waivers, because “The agency has neither the authority nor the expertise to regulate issues related to establishment worker safety.” Who does? “OSHA is the federal agency with statutory and regulatory authority to promote workplace safety and health.” But OSHA has no control over what the USDA is doing here—if Trump’s OSHA would even give a damn.
One Georgia plant that’s already received a waiver was the site of a 2014 accident that led to a worker’s leg being amputated. Workers had been asking for a fix and not gotten one; a supervisor then lied about the broken equipment that caused the accident. In 2015, at the same plant, a worker was killed when he was electrocuted by uninsulated wiring. Managers lied to ProPublica about both those accidents despite the existence of OSHA records on the cases. Another plant owned by the same company, Fieldale Farms, also got a waiver despite a worker losing several fingers. An Ohio plant owned by another company got its waiver signed the same day as a worker sustained injuries requiring multiple surgeries in an accident for which the company was fined $11,086 by OSHA.
The line speed increases are too recent for solid data on before-and-after injury statistics, Arnsdorf reports, but experts are clear on what the effects will be. Melissa Perry, chair of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, told the USDA that “there is no doubt that increasing line speed will increase laceration injuries to workers.” It’s just that the Trump administration doesn’t care.