By Zane McNeill, Truthout, A Poultry Plant in Ohio Is Under Federal Investigation for Hiring 24 Children, Used with Permission
Gerber’s Poultry, a poultry plant in Kidron, Ohio, which produces Amish Farm Chicken, is under investigation after federal agents found more than two dozen minors illegally employed in meat processing and sanitation.
“The discovery of yet another meat processing facility in the U.S. relying on child labor is the latest reminder of the harms that industrial animal agriculture inflicts at every turn, with the most vulnerable — children, people of color, immigrants, and nonhuman animals — paying the highest price,” Delcianna J. Winders, associate professor of Law at Vermont Law and Graduate School told Truthout.
The plant was raided on the evening of October 4 by Homeland Security Investigations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents following reports about the plant illegally employing children. A local resident told NBC News that the children, mainly from Guatemala, work the plant’s second shift after attending school during the day.
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It is illegal under the Federal Code of Regulations and the Fair Labor Standards Act for anyone under the age of 18 to work in hazardous occupations, such as in meatpacking plants. Despite these labor protections for children, there has been a 69 percent rise in child labor in the United States since 2018 and recent data released by the Department of Labor (DOL) has found that child labor violations have risen to their highest level in nearly two decades. In fact, the DOL currently has more than 800 child labor investigations underway and has uncovered 5,792 minors working in violation of child labor laws in the past year.
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In an attempt to circumvent the pressure from labor and youth advocates, as well as DOL investigations to ensure compliance with federal child labor laws, Republicans in Florida, Arkansas, and Iowa are working to erode child labor protections at the state level.
“Cumulatively, the Republican Party is embracing policies that would take U.S. labor protections back to the early 20th century,” Sasha Abramsky wrote for Truthout. “The GOP, which, absurdly, still fashions itself as the party of good old-fashioned family values, as the pro-life and pro-child party, repeatedly embraces policies that hurt children, especially those who belong to low-income families.”
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Who can read that without thinking of old black and white pictures of ten year old boys and girls sorting the slate out of coal. Republicans for diluting child labor laws are another example of the incoherent promotion of more births but not supporting children once they are born.
It is interesting that they always mention chickens before workers, saying not only do we treat our chickens with the highest degree of care but also our workers” seems an awful way express their support of workers.
Oh yes, we deeply care about how we treat chickens. Oh..and workers too. Yeah we care deeply about both.
E of course those chickens are killed and butchered, so…..
Sage–I think now of an early Dick Gregory sketch. He went into a restaurant and ordered a whole chicken. As he picked up his knife and fork, two white men barged up to his sides. “Whatever you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you,” one of them warned.
Dick leaned forward and kissed it.
Seriously, though, I echo your and “Dutch Guy”s bewilderment over how a party can be apoplectic over a woman wanting to end a pregnancy that could end with a baby that will never have any quality of life–or that could end the life of the mother herself. Oh, wait, I know the answer: Those pols (and their supporters) are worried about white (or, at least, native-born American) women not having babies. But as long as the kids working in meat plants are black or brown, well, that’s not so terrible because, in the eyes of the Repugnicans, they’re not quite so human.
MJ nailed it – GOPers will deny up and down until they are blue in the face that they view people of color differently than white people, but their actions betray them.
We are born to be loved, to be nurtured and allowed to become. That is the design of nature, the accomplishment of evolution. The contemporary USA is a reminder to us all that this fact of life is not a guarantee. In fact, the practice of Christianity, of virtually all fundamentalism in religion is to make sure that we are not born to be nurtured, not born to be loved or to be allowed to become what our human nature would allow us to be. Rather, we must be broken, ‘freed’ by the Saviour and put to work in the meat factory, the seminary, the mission field.