Posts Tagged ‘food processing’

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Poultry processor Wayne Farms cited by OSHA

Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

As we approach the holiday season and millions of Americans plan for poultry as a dining choice, OSHA has cited Wayne Farms for a variety of serious worker safety violations. While these types of citations constitute news that is generally only of interest in the health and safety circuit, they speak much more widely to general public health issues that should concern us all.
OSHA initiated its inspection of Wayne Farms after worker complaints about dangerous conditions in the company’s Jack, Alabama facility. According to the SPLC, which filed the complaint:

“The complaint, filed on behalf of nine current or former employees, describes how workers are subjected to dangerously fast work speeds that cause disabling injuries, prevented from getting medical treatment and even fired for reporting injuries or taking time off to see a doctor. It also outlines how workers are required to pay the company for some of their protective equipment. They are even denied reasonable access to the bathroom, according to the complaint.”

Celeste Monforton reports on the OSHA’s findings of serious and repeat violations for “prolonged repetitive, forceful tasks, often in awkward postures for extended periods of time” and gross deficiencies in the company’s lockout/tagout procedures, a violation that had previously been leveled at one of the company’s other processing plants.
The health and well-being of food processing workers is inextricably linked to important public health considerations. Injured, over-tired workers are not a good front-line defense against salmonella and other dangerous food contaminants. Last year, the USDA was considering a proposal to speed up bird processing from an already demanding 140 birds per minute to 175 – see our post USDA: What’s up with your “for the birds” food processing legislation? After a two year battle over the issues, the Agriculture Department finally dropped the proposal this past July. On the other hand, the USDA also privatized and decreased the number of food inspectors and failed to act on antibiotic-resistant salmonella, so it wasn’t all good news.
Related
NIOSH Finds Alarming 42 % Rate of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) at South Carolina Poultry Processing Plant. (See the full report)
The human cost of bringing poultry to the table .
Reactions Vary to USDA’s Poultry Inspection Rule
Food & Water Watch Sues USDA Over New Poultry Inspection Rule

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USDA: What’s up with your “for the birds” food processing legislation?

Monday, September 16th, 2013

Chickens have been a hot potato on the legislative circuit lately — well, the processing of chickens, that is. Even if you thought you had absolutely no interest in poultry processing, if consuming tasty chicken is something you enjoy, you may want to know about these laws. We’re wondering what’s up with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) – could there be something in the water?
Elizabeth Grossman of The Pump Handle offers the lowdown on one of those laws in her post Hazards behind a chicken dinner: US poultry workers ask USDA and OSHA to protect their safety. Last year, about a half million poultry workers processed about 8 billion chickens, many handling about 100 birds a minute. Now a rate like that is pretty amusing when you see Lucille Ball on a chocolate packing assembly line in the old sitcoms, but it’s a little less comical for workers wielding sharp knives while “standing in chilled processing plant facilities, cutting, gutting, scalding, defeathering and hanging birds as they speed by on automated machinery.”
But as Grossman notes, this apparently isn’t fast enough:

“If a rule proposed by USDA and supported by the poultry industry is finalized and goes into effect, the speed at which chickens and other poultry are typically processed could increase to as much as 175 birds per minute – a rate at which some plants are already operating.”

And one more thing:

“The proposed USDA rule would change the way poultry processing plant inspections work. It would shift the inspection process to one in which individual companies set inspection guidelines for their own plants.”

Now that’s not good for the workers, who are already plagued with notoriously poor working conditions and an injury rate that is about twice the national average (see also Unsafe at These Speeds) — it doesn’t sound too propitious for consumer quality, either. We’ll forgo the fox guarding the hen-house analogies and simply pose the radical idea that guidelines set by profit-driven companies may not always be in the interests of the greater good in an era that is flirting with drug-resistant Salmonella and other super pathogens.
It hasn’t worked so well in pilot programs in pork plants: See Kimberly Kindy’s Washington Post article: USDA Pilot Program fails to stop contaminated meat. Her article notes:

“Auditors from the inspector general’s office found that three of the five plants in the pilot program had racked up scores of health and safety violations, many of them for problems that were never fixed. The report did not identify the five plants and said that, since no study had been done, it was difficult to determine if contamination and other deficiencies could be attributed directly to the inspection system.

But the auditors pointed out that the safety records at the three most-troubled pilot plants were worse than those at hundreds of other U.S. swine plants that continued to operate under the traditional system, which features slower processing speeds and about double the number of government inspectors.”


But wait, there’s more. If you care about poultry workers and or food safety — pick one or both (although we see them as issues that are inextricably linked) — the news gets even worse.
Wired reports: USDA: Chicken Processed in China Can be Sold in the US Without Labels to Say So. So in addition to increasing US worker output, USDA now allows for off-shoring some of the chicken processing jobs to the wonderful folks that produced glow-in-the-dark pork. Do you trust your kids chicken nuggets to be processed by the country that produced these rather alarming food products? Of ocurse, you’ll have no way of knowing because these processed meats won’t be subject to Country Of Origin Labeling (COOL) the way that fresh meats are.
For now, the chickens will be bred, raised and slaughtered in the US and China will only be doing the processing. Note the key phrase “for now” – many industry insiders expect that this is a prelude to allowing China to export domestically raised chickens to the US.
Additional info
NIOSH study finds widespread carpal tunnel among poultry workers, underscores why Poultry Rule is a bad idea
OSHA: Poultry Processing

Will you know when your chicken was processed in China?
Your chicken nuggets may soon come from China

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Risk, creeping catastrophics, fraud, obesity, pachydermodactyly, and more

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Risk Roundup – Cavalcade of Risk #159 – Early Edition is posted at My Wealth Builder. We’d like to highlight Jason Shafrin’s post as particularly noteworthy for our readers: Healthcare Costs to Rise by over 7 percent in 2013.
Creeping catastrophics – Our colleague Mark Walls has a good article in Business Insurance on Creeping Catastrophic Claims – How to Spot Them and Stop Them. “These claims start out like any other case, usually with a back, knee or shoulder injury. However, because of a series of events, they end up costing the employer hundreds of thousands of dollars. These developmental claims share many common characteristics that, if identified and addressed in a timely manner, can prevent significant adverse development of the claims.”
Big bucks fraud – John D’Alusio unpacks the AIG debacle and explains how it hurts us all in his post Gaming the Workers Comp System at Workerscompensation.com.
Ergonomics of obesity – What does obesity look like to a workplace ergonomist? “Increased obesity in the workplace means more arthritis, larger waist circumferences, additional work limitations, compromised grip strength, decreased lower limb mobility and medical risks. Obese employees might be more vulnerable to falls and their manual material handling ability may be compromised. Obesity also can impact self-esteem, motivation, absenteeism, presenteeism, premature mortality and more.” More at Ergonomic Strategies for Managing Obesity in the Workplace
Case Law – The Tennessee Supreme Court found for an employer in a statute of limitations case involving PTSD. The employer argued that the statute of limitations clock began ticking when the event that caused the trauma occurred (viewing the bodies of two co-workers killed on the job), but the court found that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until an employee discovers the injury and, in this case, the employee did not know he had PTSD until some time after the workplace deaths occurred.
DOL Transparency – In 2011, the Department of Labor proposed a rule strengthening safety provisions for children under age 15 who work on farms. The rule had a parental exemption so that kids could still work on family farms. Apparently, industry pressure led DOL to withdraw the rule. DOL also removed the proposed rule from its website and Celeste Monforton posts that Government transparency groups are asking the Labor Dept to restore info scrubbed from website.
Texting while driving – Steve Yahn of Risk & Insurance looks at how Companies Fight Against Texting and Driving. He notes, “Gavejian and other experts who work with companies to develop cell phone and texting policies said that businesses need to first assess how technology is used in their workplace on a daily basis.”
Food processing hazard – A new report describes two cases of poultry workers who developed chronically swollen knuckles, the hallmark sign of a rare skin condition known as pachydermodactyly: Hand deformities turn up in poultry workers, report finds.
Other noteworthy news

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Risk, mining industry growth, drug repackaging, E&O, SIGS & more news of note

Monday, June 4th, 2012

Risk roundup – Nina Kallen posts the latest Cavalcade of Risk at Insurance Coverage Law in Massachusetts – check it out.
Mining – Joe Paduda talks about the growth of the mining industry, noting that it is up almost 60% over the last ten years, with an increase of 12% since the beginning of 2011 – a growth rate that looks like it will surpass the BLS ten-year projection of 24%. Joe notes that regulators, work comp executives and providers should be on alert since this growth will have a dramatic impact on selected states, citing North Dakota as one example.
Disparity in healthcare costs – Dave DePaolo has an interesting post on the wide disparity in cost for cash paying patients vs insurance. He points to a recent LA Times article that cited numerous real world examples (routine blood work was charged $782 by the hospital, $415 by the insurer, and $95 if paid in cash.) DePaolo asks: “What would fee schedules look like if those in charge of these pricing decisions shared with payers and regulators all of the data that identified each friction point in insurance based reimbursement schedules versus getting paid cash?”
Florida drug repackaging – Do the people who write the biggest checks to politicians determine the cost of workers comp in Florida? That’s a question many keep raising, and it appears so. In the article drug-bill battle is lucrative for lobbyists, legislators, Aaron Deslatte of The Orlando Sentinel talks about how Broward County’s Automated Health Care Solutions has invested nearly $6 million into lobbying to protect the practice of drug repackaging by physicians. Why should this issue be of concern to Florida employers and insurers? Joe Paduda offers a primer on repackaged drugs and the effect on work comp costs.
E&O and workers comp – Workers’ compensation is the leading cause of agent in E&O claims, accounting for approximately 10% of all claims annually, according to Curt Pearsall. He notes the majority of claims involve the following issues: Questions involving coverage for sole proprietors, partnerships or single-member LLCs; Dealing with a broker to place coverage for that “tough” risk; Dealing with the state workers’ comp market to place coverage; Ensuring employees in all states are covered; Placing clients in a trust/alternative program; and U.S. Longshoreman and Harbor coverage.
On reforming SIGS – At LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation Law, John Stahl offers a summary and some of the salient points of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions’ (IAIABC) recent report on self-insurance groups (SIGs): Regulatory Challenges Regarding Self-Insured Groups: Failures Prompt New Regulation. He notes that employers liked the low cost of joining an SIG but did not realize the potential liabilities associated with that choice, and that many employers made the false assumption that they were protected by state regulation. The full IAIABC report is available for $45: Self-Insured Groups for Workers’ Compensation: Effective Regulatory Strategies.
CA protects hair care workers – Jon Gelman posts about a groundbreaking settlement in California that protects hair care salon workers. The settlement was between California’s Attorney General and manufacturers of Brazilian Blowout hair smoothing products that contain a cancer-causing chemical. In addition to paying fees and penalties and implementing safeguards for workers, hair care facilities must warn the public about the cancer-causing potential of the chemicals used in the procedure and must cease deceptive advertising.
Poultry workers push back – Citing concerns over worker and public health, poultry workers, safety advocates, and groups ranging from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Council of LaRaza, to the American Public Health Association and Nebraska Appleseed all united in opposition to USDA’s proposed ‘modernization” plan that would shift work from inspectors to workers. At The Pump Handle, Celeste Monforton talks about this issue: Public health officials urge USDA to withdraw plan to ‘modernize’ poultry inspection, worker and food safety will suffer.
A Request for Help Bob Wilson calls all UR hands on deck for participation in Health Strategy Associates’ survey. Learn more here: Your Opinion Needed on Critical Utilization Management Survey.
Migration from Mexico – Peter Rousmaniere posts about a recent Pew Hispanic Center Report on Mexican migration, which states that, “The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants–more than half of whom came illegally–the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped–and may have reversed.”
Some of the factors cited as contributing to this change include the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.
it would be funny if it weren’t so true – Cartoonist Jen Sorenson issues An Open Letter To The Supreme Court About Health Insurance.
Death on the Job The Weekly Toll.
More noteworthy news

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Annals of Compensability: A Bitter-Sweet Case of Chemical Sensitivity

Monday, September 19th, 2011

We know that there are individuals with extreme sensitivity to chemicals. What we don’t know, in many cases, is whether exposure to chemicals in the workplace produces a compensable incident under workers comp. As with work-related illnesses (e.g., cancer possibly caused by workplace carcinogens), it can be difficult to prove that the workplace exposure is the predominant cause of the disability.
For a little over a year in mid-1990s, Deborah Chriestenson worked for Russell Stover Candies in Iola, Kansas. She had been diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivity in 1986. She worked as a plant nurse, safety coordinator, and workers compensation benefits coordinator. Her office was located across the hall from a laundry facility. Chriestensen contends that she could smell bleach on a regular basis in her office. She claimed to have suffered respiratory symptoms as well as increasing headaches as a result of this exposure.
Chriestenson also claims she was occasionally exposed to methyl bromide fumes emanating from a room where nuts were fumigated. In addition, she claims that she was exposed to fumes from pesticides, truck exhaust, paint, and anhydrous ammonia at various times during her employment at Russell Stover. [As for the future eating of chocolate nut clusters from Russell Stover or any other manufacturer, I leave it to the reader to perform his/her own risk analysis…]
Soon after her termination from the company, Chriestenson filed a workers comp claim. She received temporary total disability benefits. Her claim wended its way slowly through the Kansas system, until 2006, 11 years after she left the company, a split panel of comp judges awarded her permanent total disability (PTD) benefits.
There were two key elements supporting of Chriestenson’s claim: her own testimony and that of an expert witness, Dr. Grace Ziem, who specializes in chemical sensitivity. (Dr. Ziem’s website is full of red flags for toxic exposures.) Dr. Ziem’s testimony was key: without her connecting Chriestensen’s problems directly to the workplace, there would be no comp claim.
Evidence-Based Medicine
The Kansas Court of Appeals has reversed the decision to award Chriestenson PTD benefits. While they recognize Dr. Ziem’s skills as a medical provider, they question her credentials to connect Chriestenson’s problems to the workplace. For one thing, Chriestenson is a lifelong smoker; Dr. Ziem casually dismisses any connection between smoking and Chriestenson’s respitory problems. In addition, Dr. Ziem did not bother to examine the medical records pertaining to treatment of Chriestenson in the days and months immediately following her filing of a comp claim. Finally, the Kansas court calls into question Dr. Ziem’s methods, citing court rulings in two other cases where her testimony was rejected outright.
In Georgia:
Our research has revealed that several courts across the United States have also had difficulty with causation opinions expressed by Dr. Ziem in chemical sensitivity cases. In Mason v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 283 Ga. 271, 658 S.E.2d 603 (2008), Dr. Ziem was not permitted to testify on causation in an civil lawsuit against a manufacturer and seller of a floor covering product. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a trial court’s determination that “Dr. Ziem’s methods [are] based only on her own experience and opinions, without any support in published scientific journals or any reliable techniques for discerning the behaviors and effects of the chemicals contained” in the floor covering product. 283 Ga. at 279.
In Tennessee:
Likewise, in Wynacht v. Beckman Instruments, Inc., 113 F.Supp.2d 1205 (E.D. Tenn. 2000), the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee did not allow Dr. Ziem to offer an opinion on causation in a product liability case arising out of alleged exposure to chemicals in the workplace. Although the court found her qualified to diagnose medical conditions and treat patients, it found that “[t]he ability to diagnose medical conditions is not remotely the same . . . as the ability to deduce, delineate, and describe, in a scientifically reliable manner, the causes of those medical conditions.”
Given her prior history, the lack of compelling evidence in the workplace exposure and her ongoing smoking, Chriestenson is unable to prove a definitive connection between workplace exposures and her current inability to work. It is a sad case, for sure, and it is entirely possible that work contributed in some degree to her current dilemma. But the burden of proof in this type of claim is difficult, often impossible, to achieve. For all her expertise in treating chemical sensitivity, Dr. Ziem has fallen short in her effort to establish herself as a credible expert witness – at least in Georgia, Tennessee and Kansas.

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Cavalcade of Risk #123 and assorted news notes from the blogosphere

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Get your biweekly fix of risk: Cavalcade of Risk #123: High-Yield Edition is now posted at The Notwithstanding Blog. There’s an eclectic roundup of posts and you might take the time to visit the host blog too – our blogger is a Canadian med student studying here in the U.S., and posts “tales from medical school, health policy analysis, critiques of the academic medical zeitgeist, and the occasional bonus Canadiana.”
Misclassification in Maine – analysts in the Maine Labor Department estimate that tax losses to the state resulting from misclassification could be as high as $36 million a year. As in many other states, lawmakers had been looking at establishing guidelines and rules for independent contractors. Newly elected Governor Paul LePage abolished the state’s misclassification task force that had been working on this initiative, stating that he would be introducing legislation based on the federal definition.
Union Demographics – Jeffrey Hirsch of Workplace Prof Blog gives us the latest report on union density for 2010: “Overall union density went down from 12.3% to 11.9%; in the private sector, union density went down from 7.2% to 6.9%, and in the public sector, it went from 37.4% to 36.2%.” See more detail at his post.
Vote for Workers’ Comp Notable People – Lexis Nexis announced the finalists in its Workers’ Comp Notable People 2010 – check it out and vote for your favorites. Voters can select two individuals from each of the three categories. The voting period runs from January 23, 2011 through February 4, 2011. Click here to join and vote in the LinkedIn Work Comp Analysis Group.
Food industry – WorkersCompensation.com features an in-depth federal report on Injuries, Illnesses, And Fatalities In Food Manufacturing In 2008, which notes that “Workers in food manufacturing are more likely to be fatally injured and experience nonfatal injuries and illnesses than workers in private industry as a whole. Food manufacturing workers are also much more likely to suffer an injury requiring job transfer or restriction than one that requires days away from work.”
Underwriters – After reading an article on disappearing jobs, Jared Wade of Risk Management Monitor considers whether insurance underwriters are an endangered species now that technology can crunch the numbers.
Sign of changing times? – Roberto Ceniceros discusses how some of the large carriers are letting business walk rather than price it too low. With the combined ratio moving up, many industry analysts have stated that underwriting will make the difference between profit and loss and it appears that some insurers are taking heed.
Technology – Some workers comp insurers are adopting self-reporting options for payroll reporting for employers.
Quick takes

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Another sad chapter in the “no exit” chronicles

Monday, December 20th, 2010

We’re just a few short months away from the 100-year anniversary of one of the most horrific industrial tragedies in our nation, one that catapulted the issue of worker safety to the forefront and helped to usher in a new era reform, including the protection afforded by workers compensation programs. On March 21, 1911, The Triangle Factory Fire killed 146 women and girls, most of whom were trapped on an upper floor of the factory. They were unable to get out because the doors had been locked to prevent theft. You can read many first-person accounts of the tragedy at the link above. My colleague wrote about it in his post The Original “No Exit” : The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire.
In the wake of this tragedy, many safety laws were enacted and many lessons were learned.
Or were they? Last week, the tragedy was mirrored in a Bangladesh garment shop fire that killed 29 women workers and injured another 100. It’s feared that more bodies will turn up. Reports say that to prevent theft, emergency exits were locked.
Now some might think that, however tragic, a fire in Bangladesh doesn’t have much to do with us here in the U.S. Except that in our global economy, it does. Many of the most successful U.S. retailers and clothing manufactures have outsourced former domestic garment jobs to some 4,000 Bangladesh factories. In an article Workers Burned Alive Making Clothes for the GAP, human rights and labor groups make the link. The article paints a grim picture of serial fatalities in Dickensian-era sweat shops where workers are paid less than a dollar a day. In response to publicized abuses, some US companies have established “Codes of Vendor Conduct,” but with a continuing stream of fatalities and worker abuses, labor groups question the effectiveness of these codes and demand a higher level of scrutiny. “How many times in one year do workers have to die before GAP Inc determines that the Hameem group “lacks the intent or ability” to make improvements? This is an American company accountable to American consumers.”
It’s not just The Gap. Other companies that are supplied by Bangladesh garment factories include Wal-Mart, Tesco, H&M, Zara, Carrefour, Gap, Metro, JCPenney, Marks & Spencer, Kohl’s, Levi Strauss and Tommy Hilfiger. Surely, American companies could join forces in leveraging their buying power to demand that safety and basic human rights are enforced.
Unfortunately, here in the U.S., we aren’t immune to such abuses, either. In 1991, 25 poultry workers were killed in a Hamlet chicken processing plant in North Carolina, another instance of workers being locked in. An investigation resulted in the owners receiving a 20-year prison sentence and the company was fined the highest penalty in the history of North Carolina. One would think that U.S. employers would have learned from the Triangle and the hamlet fires, but one would be wrong. In 2004, The new York Times reported that Walmart was locking night shift employees in. Later in the same year, OSHA cited a Winn Dixie supermarket in Mobile, Alabama for similar practices.
The road to good safety practices here in the US was paved with the blood of workers. It took incidents like the Triangle fire and large scale mining disasters before the US public clamored for reform. It remains to be seen whether the same types of offshore tragedies will galvanize consumer opinion enough to call for better worker protections.

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Cavalcade of Risk and other news briefs

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

The first Cavalcade of Risk of the new decade has been posted by Louise of Colorado Health Insurance Insider – check it out. And while you’re visiting the Cavalcade, why not check out the rest of the entries on the C.H.I.I. blog? We don’t live in Colorado, but if we did, we’d definitely be doing business with Jay and Louise Norris.
The importance of the right doctor – Roberto Ceniceros of Comp Time posts about a new John Hopkins study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that shows that 3.7% of doctors accounted for 72% of claim costs in a study of claims data from Louisiana Workers’ Comp Corporation from 1998 to 2002. He notes that one of the researchers commented, “…it makes sense to analyze how practice patterns drive costs before instituting sweeping reform.”
Sandy Blunt and the goings on in North Dakota – Good for Peter Rousmaniere and Joe Paduda for shedding light on the travesty of a prosecution related to Sandy Blunt, former CEO of North Dakota’s Workforce Safety and Insurance. I met Sandy Blunt at a conference in DC a number of years ago and had been following the turn-around he was effecting in North Dakota’s system. He struck me as progressive, innovative, and very sharp – it seemed a real coup for North Dakota to have his services. Then came a series of surprising charges resulting in his ouster. In following the case, it appears that most of these charges were minor, trumped up administrative issues, such as spending a few hundred dollars on lunches and gift certificates to motivate staff – practices that were not uncommon in other state departments. Other more serious charges were dismissed or shown to be erroneous. Blunt has appealed his conviction to the state’s Supreme Court and we hope he will prevail.
Insurance Fraud – Emily Holbrook of Risk Monitor posts about a spike in insurance fraud as indicated by a recent report from the Coalition of Insurance Fraud: “Overall, the economy in 2009 appears to have had a significant impact on the incidence of fraud. On average, fraud bureaus reported the number of referrals received and cases opened increased in all 15 categories of fraud included in the survey.” Unsurprisingly, the biggest number of fraud cases occurred in the category of bogus health insurance.
Popcorn flavorings vs public and worker health – Celeste Monforton of The Pump Handle provides an update on a public health issue of concern to workers and consumers alike: butter flavorings in popcorn. After a public outcry about diacetyl flavorings, which were causing worker and consumer health problems, the industry began substituting a product labeled as “no diacetyl.” Preliminary reports from NIOSH indicate that these chemical changes do not translate into less health risk to exposed workers and consumers.
EEOC report – Workplace Prof Blog posts about Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement statistics, which were recently issued for fiscal year 2009. A sampling from the EEOC press release: “The FY 2009 data show that private sector job bias charges (which include those filed against state and local governments) alleging discrimination based on disability, religion and/or national origin hit record highs. The number of charges alleging age-based discrimination reached the second-highest level ever. Continuing a decade-long trend, the most frequently filed charges with the EEOC in FY 2009 were charges alleging discrimination based on race (36%), retaliation (36%), and sex-based discrimination (30%). Multiple types of discrimination may be alleged in a single charge filing.”
Work violence – Does the economy play a role in workplace violence? That’s a question posed by the Christian Science Monitor in the light of a recent shooting rampage by a disgruntled worker of manufacturer ABB Group in St. Louis that left three dead and several wounded. One factor that the article did not reference is the stress that many people feel post holidays. This story brought to mind a post-holiday workplace shooting rampage in Massachusetts a number of years ago involving another disgruntled employee.

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The human cost of bringing poultry to the table

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Last week, North Carolina’s Occupational Safety and Health division levied 49 citations and $178,000 in fines for workplace hazards on the House of Raeford Farms, one of nation’s largest poultry processors. This action was taken in response to serious, repeat safety violations, many involving hazardous chemicals that pose a threat to the safety of both the plant workers and the community. These violations are startling given the company’s past record:

“In 2003, House of Raeford worker Bruce Glover died after a leak sent chlorine gas seeping into the company’s Rose Hill plant. The next year, a major ammonia leak at that plant forced a large-scale evacuation and sent 17 workers to the hospital with respiratory problems and burning throats. N.C. OSHA cited the company for chemical violations after each of those accidents – and each time agreed to slash the proposed penalties.
After the 2004 ammonia leak, regulators found that the company didn’t do enough to prevent and detect such accidents and had not installed an alarm system to speed evacuations.”

After these incidents and before the most recent inspections, the House of Raeford had been fined $117,000 but was able to whittle those fines down to $26,500. Unfortunately, negotiating OSHA fines down has become common practice in recent years, a practice that does little to discourage irresponsible companies from engaging in repeat violations.
That the inspections and fines were levied at all is due in no small part to the investigative series that the Charlotte Observer ran on the poultry industry and their continued reporting on the issues of safety violations, child labor, and illegal immigrant exploitation in the poultry industry, beginning with the The Cruelest Cuts, an extensive 6 part series. The series focused on the difficult and unsafe conditions facing the the 28,000 poultry workers in the region – conditions that seem more in tune with the turn-of-the century slaughterhouses depicted in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle than in our modern, high tech 21st century world. An editorial accompanying the series states:

“Our team of reporters and editors spent 22 months interviewing more than 200 poultry workers throughout the Southeast and analyzing industry documents. Their investigation soon led them to focus on one of the largest Carolinas-based poultry producers, House of Raeford. Its eight plants have been cited for more serious safety violations than all but two other poultry companies in recent years — and more than some companies several times their size.
Our journalists found evidence that House of Raeford has failed to report serious injuries, including broken bones and carpal tunnel syndrome. They discovered that plant officials often dismissed workers’ requests for medical care that would cost the company money.
They also found that House of Raeford has undergone a work force transformation. In the early 1990s, its workers were largely African Americans. Today, between 80 percent and 90 percent of workers at some of its plants are Latinos. Most have no legal standing in this country; most are poor.
They are our newest subclass.”

It’s difficult reading on the eve of the day when most of us prepare to enjoy a turkey feast tomorrow, but if not now, it’s worth a bookmark for reading at a later time. We commend the Charlotte Observer for their reporting. When corporate social responsibility fails and when public policy enforcers are weak, it’s important that someone take up the banner for worker and public safety.

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Cavalcade of Risk; WC and hospital profits; poultry industry expose

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

It’s Cavalcade of Risk day, and Louise Norris has an Independence day edition posted at Colorado Health Insurance Insider. Louise and her husband Jay have an interesting story about how they came to the field of health insurance: literally, through the school of hard knocks after intersecting with the health care industry through personal experience, a series of sports-related injuries. Today, as a locally-owned Colorado brokerage, they are respected health insurance consultants. One nice thing about the web is how an informative site such as theirs can serve as a great equalizer for smaller entrepreneurial firms – if you live in Colorado, they sound like great people to do business with.
Meanwhile, check out today’s edition. There’s a lot of good reading material linked – be sure to catch Nancy Germond’s entry on writing a workplace incident report and Joe Paduda’s entry on the horrors of universal coverage. And while over at Joe’s place, also see his post on workers comp – the hospital profit engine – it’s a real eye opener. Here’s a teaser: “The entire US hospital industry generated profits of roughly $25 billion, workers’ compensation – which you will remember represents only about 1.5% of total hospital revenues – accounts for approximately 16 percent of all the profits for US hospitals.” He follows this post with another on DRGs, Medicare, hospitals, and workers comp, where he delves into further explanation for the costs. If you work in workers comp or managed care, these are must-read posts.
Bill Moyers on the poultry industry and worker safety – We’ve blogged several times about the appalling state of safety in the poultry and meat packing industries. This year, there has been a concerted focus on the poultry industry, largely thanks to the excellent investigative journalism in the Charlotte Observer’s The Cruelest Cuts, a six-part multimedia series – well worth exploration if you missed it first time around. Now, Bill Moyers has picked up the ball, covering the topic in a 22 minute investigative report of the poultry industry (video clip), which shows how official statistics showing a drop in workplace injuries may have been the result of deceptive reporting. See much more information on poultry worker safety at Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS.

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