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Workers Walk Out After Fourth Death At Smithfield Meat Plant (plantbasednews.org)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/53152091

Following an anonymous complaint in February, OSHA inspected the plant and fined Smithfield Foods $9,931.60 after observing workers’ exposure to “amputation hazards.” This was preceded by serious citations in 2021, 2023, and 2025.

Working in a slaughterhouse is extremely dangerous. In the US, there are approximately two amputations per week, primarily due to the industry’s poor working conditions and excessively fast pace.

[...]

As reported by KWQC, the leaders also acknowledged “community concerns” over a backlog of rendering material – animal waste, internal organs, and decaying meat – being stored outside the plant, causing a strong, unpleasant smell in the city.

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[–] 36 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Isn't Smithfield the company that was videoed grinding up moldy bread still in the plastic packaging for use as pig feed?

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  • [–] [S] 41 points 1 week ago* (6 children)

    Yep, more than just moldy bread, and more than just Smithfield

    One of the more surprising ways plastics end up in the food system happens on livestock farms in a practice called garbage feeding. Legal in 27 states, the practice is shown in a 2022 video taken by a maintenance technician at a grain elevator owned by Smithfield, where bread in plastic wrappers was being processed into feed. The video went viral, and an executive from Smithfield responded to say most plastic is vacuumed out onsite. The technician disagreed, but there is no agency that inspects or oversees the process to tell for sure.

    https://sentientmedia.org/how-microplastics-get-into-meat/

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  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    Awesome. This is one of those moments when the system truly impresses with creative ways to make profit.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    The meat, dairy, egg, etc. industry has no shortage of creative ways to be horrible in search of slight gains. For instance

    Forced molting, sometimes known as induced molting, is the practice by some poultry industries of artificially provoking a flock to molt simultaneously, typically by withdrawing food for 7–14 days and sometimes also withdrawing water for an extended period

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_molting

    Or one particularly bizarre one from the shrimp farming industry

    Eyestalk ablation is the removal of one (unilateral) or both (bilateral) eyestalks from a crustacean. It is routinely practiced on female shrimps (or female prawns) in almost every marine shrimp maturation or reproduction facility in the world, both research and commercial. The aim of ablation under these circumstances is to stimulate the female shrimp to develop mature ovaries and spawn.[1] The practice has drawn criticism from animal welfare advocates due to concerns about pain, distress, and long-term impacts on shrimp health and behaviour.[2][3]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyestalk_ablation

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  • [–] 7 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Holy fucking shit

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 1 week ago

    Also, worth checking out the Wikipedia categories with a long list of the questionable things. There's so much more than what I listed, sadly

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethically_disputed_business_practices_towards_animals

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethically_disputed_research_practices_towards_animals

    There's a lot of topcis that aren't even articles on Wikipedia too

    Or if you want to see something more visually disturbing, there's a good documentary called Dominion which covers a lot of these industries horrifying practices

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  • [+] -6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Moldy bread is used to make bread crumbs for human consumption all day long....

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    A quick ddg search pulled up nothing, so do you have a source for this?

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago

    Oh - my buddy used to work overnights at a food processing plant in the summers to afford university.... His job, take all the bread that came back from the grocery stores, rip the bags open and throw them in the hopper of the industrial toaster that started the breadcrumb process.

    Not to say all the bread was moldy, but plenty was..... It was the bread that came back that didn't sell before their expiry.... My buddy would describe a lot of what he'd throw in had a rainbow of mold colors on it.

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