Full Article

Some exerpts:

OMAHA, Neb. - He works in a world of long knives and huge saws, blood and bone, arctic chill and sweltering heat. For Martin Cortez, this is life on the line as a meatpacker.

ADVERTISEMENT

It's no place for the squeamish. Some workers can't stomach the gore — chopping up the meat and bones of hundreds of cattle, day after day. Cortez has been at it more than 30 years. It also can be very dangerous. Some workers have been slashed, burned or scarred. He has not.

Even so, Martin Cortez, a soft-spoken man with sad eyes, doesn't recommend the work. The thrashing animals, the heavy lifting ... all that goes into putting steak and hamburger on America's dinner tables, he says, makes for a backbreaking day on the killing floor.

"You know what I like to say to newcomers?" he says. "They don't kill cows. They kill people."
In 2006, the problems persist — though the names have changed. The eastern Europeans who flocked to Chicago's bustling stockyards 100 years ago have been replaced by Mexican and Central American immigrants chasing their own dreams in the remote reaches of the rural Midwest and Southeast.

"It's not as bad as it was in the sense of the sheer brutality of 100 years ago — before labor laws and food safety laws," says Lance Compa, a Cornell University labor law expert who wrote a stinging Human Rights Watch report on the meat and poultry industry last year. "But for the times we're in now, the situation is much in line with what it was 100 years ago."

"It's extremely dangerous when it shouldn't be," he says. "Workers are exploited when they shouldn't be. The companies know it."

Others also say even with better regulation, if the meatpacking industry is judged against other workplace progress, it falls short.
The GAO also cautions progress may not be that dramatic because injuries and illnesses still appear to be underreported — immigrants may fear retaliation or job loss, and supervisors may not report the problems or encourage workers not to because some plants have incentives, such as money or other prizes, for maintaining a safe workplace.

Numbers aside, the GAO also says the industry is still plenty dangerous with knife-wielding workers standing long hours on fast-moving lines, chemicals, animal waste and factory floors that can be dark, loud, slippery or unbearably hot or bitter cold.

The risks are many: cuts and stabbings, burns, repetitive stress injuries, amputations and worse. Knife accidents blinded one meat worker and disfigured the face of another, the GAO said, citing OSHA records.

Oscar Montoya lost most of his left index finger in a 1999 accident using a huge split-saw to divide cattle carcasses. He had three operations, returned to meatpacking, then finally quit.
Juan Valadez understands. When he arrived from Mexico 30 years ago looking for work, most doors were not open to him. Meatpacking was. He needed the check. The company needed him. It was a match.

Now, he says the rigors of the job have caught up with his 50-year-old body.

"The line never stops and you keep working and working and you get tired," he says. "You sometimes hope the line breaks so you can rest a little bit."

"It's the easiest job to get, but the hardest job to do," he adds. "It kills you little by little."
Another blow against meat eating.. the work which produces meat is backbreaking, barely sufficient to support a family and physically harmful.