Cleanup at the slaughterhouse

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-29/america-s-worst-graveyard-shift-is-grinding-up-workers

by SQL2219 • 9 years ago

76 64 9 years ago

SQL2219• 9 years ago

“It’s sad to say, but it’s the gospel truth: Seven out of 10 Americans in the Deep South, whether black or white, will fail the drug test”

JonnyNova• 9 years ago

Not needing to subject yourself to drug testing for work definitely a perk of certain industries.

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

TPTB have so perverted the Law that few of their subjects can bear it anymore. Now they must import new subjects, who will suffer all the depredations of a lifetime in the few years they manage to survive here.

jpollock• 9 years ago

NOTE: DEFINITELY NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH.

I went looking for example videos of cleanup:

USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJ4vI-JA88

Poland(?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTQhNx_jpg

Why you clean the plant daily:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Canada_listeriosis_outbre...

jansanchez• 9 years ago

The second link is indeed in Poland, noticed the signs in Polish (https://youtu.be/enTQhNx_jpg?t=109).

anonymous51337• 9 years ago

You don't necessarily need to clean the plant daily. Bigger ag producers (especially poultry) are protected from certain food-borne illness lawsuits because it is impossible to remove those pathogens from the food supply, even with cleaning. Salmonella is one of them and there is a new antibiotic resistance strain that is spreading.

cageface9• 9 years ago

One more reason to stop supporting the horrific animal agriculture industry in this country. You don’t need anything they produce and their business is morally and environmentally toxic.

anonymous51337• 9 years ago

Couldn't agree more.

xexers2• 9 years ago

When talking about the ethics of eating meat, we often focus on the ethics of killing animals... but it's also worth talking about the ethics towards out fellow human beings.

In bullet form, it's worth thinking about:

* Swine flu killed an estimated 1 million people (and made many other sick for a whole week). Swine flu was directly a result of factory farming

* many of our antibiotics arent working any more and people are dying in hospitals because of it

* We are overfishing the entire ocean. Some communities are poor and rely on those fish to survive. Us rich people are taking food from the poor

* Slash/burn deforestation of rainforests has largely been from farmers who want to either raise beer or grow soy (to feed to animals). Those forests are often home to aboriginal people.

* (the contents of this article)

cageface9• 9 years ago

Not to mention massive greenhouse gas emissions and toxic runoff of animal sewage into rivers, lakes and oceans that makes people that live near them sick.

drdeadringer2• 9 years ago

What do you think about "lab-grown" meat, if such would ever reach market to speak of?

xexers2• 9 years ago

I'm super excited about it. It would solve all of the problems I listed above (and then some).

Tomte• 9 years ago

I find that nauseating and gross. Maybe I'll change my mind if I've actually seen and tasted such a piece of "meat", but right now it's on the same level as Soylent for me.

dbg31415• 9 years ago

I grew up on a cattle ranch. We butchered our own cattle.

Please don't assume all meat comes from conditions described in this article.

Slaughterhouse / factory systems are disgusting. I don't eat meat that I know was sourced this way.

You can, fairly easily in most places, support your local farmers and ranchers and buy direct.

And if you want to know why it's not easier to get locally sourced meat from family farms / small producers, you can look to the government. They've done all they can over the last 30 years to make it next to impossible for the "little guys" in the business.

* Small Meat Producers Take Their Slaughterhouse Gripes To Congress : The Salt : NPR || https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/15/448942740/sm...

Pfhreak4• 9 years ago

I just bought from a small farmer, the process was remarkably painless. I bought from them, they delivered the animal to the butcher, and I picked it up after it was processed and packaged. Maybe Washington/Seattle makes it easier, but it really wasn't a whole lot more effort than getting the meat from a grocery store.

cageface9• 9 years ago

Farming this way is better for the animals and the environment but it can never scale to meet even current demand for meat. Farms like the one you describe are a tiny minority and there are even fewer small independent slaughterhouses. 99% of the meat people eat comes from places like the one described in this article. This book explains in detail why this is the case:

https://meatonomics.com/

shlant• 9 years ago

"Please don't assume all meat comes from conditions described in this article."

Every time something like this comes to HN, someone always has to point out that not ALL meat comes from CAFO's.

For anyone interested, the top 4 beef producers account for over 80% of the production:

http://www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/07contable.pdf

So yea, you can go ahead and focus on how there is a sliver of meat consumed that didn't come from horrid conditions, but you'd be minimizing the true reality

anonymous51337• 9 years ago

Also cattle ranching is the largest source of man-made methane emissions as well as the leading cause of amazon rainforest deforestation. Since people don't want to discuss the meat issue, it is easy for Brazilian ranchers to burn down millions of acres of rain forest every year to create cattle grazing land.

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

OK, this job is objectively worse than the one we were worrying about earlier today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16033895

kiwicopple2• 9 years ago

This reply might not be a popular (judging by the comments in this thread), but I worked in an abattoirs for 4 years and I want to point out that the article has a bit of an agenda:

The only slaughterhouse job worse than eviscerating animals is cleaning up afterward. The third-shift workers, as the cleaners are often called, wade through blood and grease and chunks of bone and flesh, racing all night to hose down the plant with disinfectants and scalding water. The stench is unbearable. Many workers retch.

I should mention that I worked in New Zealand so YMMV, but this was never my experience. There was cleanup with high pressure hoses throughout the day, most of the time cold water to save power. No animals were eviscerated, they want as little wastage as possible; if it isn't consumable by humans it can be sold as animal food. The animals were knocked out (like a strong taser) before they were killed. Nobody was retching; it smelled bad (particularly pigs) but you get used to in the same way you adjust to any bad smell.

I agree with the comments here that we need to move quickly to lab-grown meat or a vegetarian diet. But I have to acknowledge that the abattoirs I worked at acted as responsibly and humanely as possible

cageface9• 9 years ago

Conditions in US slaughterhouses are considerably worse than a lot of other first world countries. And instead of cleaning up its act the industry is doing what it can to make exposing its practices illegal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag

spraak• 9 years ago

in New Zealand so YMMV

Very different than the US

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

I would agree, TFA says much more about USA industrial organization than it does about butchering animals. After all, humans have butchered animals for many millennia. We recently had a cow slaughtered by local Mennonites. I can report that none of these awful things were going on there. There might be some "child labor", if one's definition of "child" is more expansive than that of the Mennonites. Still, they have none of these nightmare machines and anyway not even a Mennonite would make his own kids try to clean one while it was still running.

robotresearcher• 9 years ago

If the bowels of the animal were separated from the rest of its body, it was eviscerated, by definition.

pcr0• 9 years ago

Indeed, I'd choose the "worst job in tech" over the "worst factory job" any day.

whyenot• 9 years ago

The woman at the beginning of the article made $202 a week doing this work. Based on the danger, the potential impact on human health and the US food system, the limited job pool, it sure feels like this is the type of job that should pay more.

ams6110• 9 years ago

If the employer can find enough people willing to do it for $202 a week, then that is what the job will pay.

gerdesj• 9 years ago

OSHA = "Occupational Safety and Health Administration". The article says that OSHA fines are rarely above $20,000. Is that really true?

In the UK, I think the equivalent agency is HSE - Health and Safety Executive. These is the first things I found to demonstrate a possible difference:

"Martin McColl Limited and JMS Retail Concepts Limited have both been sentenced today after two members of the public tripped and fell over construction work outside a convenience store in Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan. ... Martin McColl Limited of Ashwells Road, Brentwood, Essex pleaded guilty on the first day of a two day trial after initially pleading not guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and have been fined £600,000 and ordered to pay costs of £11,520.

JMS Retail Concepts Limited of Stump Lane, Chorley, Lancashire pleaded guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and have been fined £40,000 and ordered to pay costs of £3,038."

http://press.hse.gov.uk/2017/retail-company-and-construction...

Contrast that with this:

"The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Tampa Electric Co. and Gaffin Industrial Services Inc. after five employees were fatally injured, and one other suffered serious burns. ... Proposed penalties for both companies totaled $160,972."

https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/region4/12282017

Pfhreak4• 9 years ago

After reading the above and an article by Glenn Greenwald [1] on ag-gag laws and the mistreatment of industrial animals, I've stopped eating meat unless I've met the farmer and (ideally) seen the farm.

I'm vegetarian outside the house, and our family ordered a half a cow from a farmer who lives ~30 minutes away. It was butchered by a small shop. I received something like 200+lbs of meat from a single animal, raised well, grass fed at a cost of around $8/lb.

The lifestyle change has been far easier than I expected, and it feels like a decision that actually has a local impact. (As opposed to, say, tweeting outrage.)

There's a whole bunch of support for making this change that I wasn't aware of. If you are in the NW, Seattle Tilth puts out a guide to all the regional farms [2], and most of them have websites and email contact info.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05/factory-farms-fbi-missin...

[2] http://www.pugetsoundfresh.org/

PhasmaFelis3• 9 years ago

I received something like 200+lbs of meat from a single animal, raised well, grass fed at a cost of around $8/lb. The lifestyle change has been far easier than I expected

I think this illustrates why it's so hard to make any large-scale progress on industrial animal welfare. I'm glad that this works for you and you're able to make a difference in your own life, but spending $1600 on meat, even 200lbs of meat, is not an option that most people have.

cageface9• 9 years ago

Giving up meat entirely is an option everybody has. Plant based diets are not only cheaper but healthier. I switched to a plant based diet in 2017 and it's the best decision I've made in a long time. I feel better physically and mentally and feel better about the role I play on the planet too.

oldandtired2• 9 years ago

If you budget properly, then it is no problem. If you say you are unable to budget because you are poor then you are just deluding yourself.

I have been well off and poor and if you look at what you are spending you cash on very carefully, you can make changes that allow you to get ahead, even if only a small way.

I just watched a local lady buy 3 packs of fags (30 per pack) and she spent $90+ on those items. That's the equivalent of a week's food for the five of us at home (youngest is 16, eldest is 58).

The process above of buying from a farmer and getting a butcher to slaughter and pack is something we have done over the years. I have even slaughtered and butchered sheep myself, an interesting task but well worth the effort to learn. Best mutton I have ever had.

anonymous51337• 9 years ago

The vast majority of that "cheap" meat is heavily processed and extremely unhealthy for you. I would say that it is a major contributor to our obesity epidemic. The average american is consuming far is excess of the amount of protein they should be consuming. In reality, they should be obtaining their protein from plant based sources which are high in fiber and lack of negatives of meat.

scruple• 9 years ago

It depends entirely on where you live. In rural Ohio, my parents have been buying farm raised cattle from family friends and having it processed locally for something like 4 decades. It's mundane, commonplace. But, where your absolutely correct, is that it's also _significantly_ cheaper than what I pay for it in California. The worst of it is that I have to source from north of the bay area and I live in Orange county. The farm I do business with (I did visit them once, many years ago when I first came to CA) has a processor on site and handles delivery, but my last order for a quarter came out to something like $9.80/lb. My parents are still paying under $3/lb. back home. I'd love to order a half but I can't afford it and so my wife and I just don't eat a lot of beef as a result.

Pfhreak4• 9 years ago

We split it with many families, each paying for a share of the larger amount. I recognize not everyone will be able to coordinate with a group of families, or have a local farmers market. But many of us do, and may not be aware this option even exists.

joevandyk• 9 years ago

I started work at Crowd Cow earlier this year as a way to feel better about what I eat. Our goal is to let people know about their food and purchase from farms they like.

https://www.crowdcow.com

Pfhreak4• 9 years ago

We actually looked at crowd cow, but at the time, the animals were grain finished, which we were trying to avoid. Still, a great resource for folks!

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

From a policy standpoint, a major issue is that meatpacking and the use of immigrant labor, can be compared to the rise of prisons, especially private prisons. These become entrenched in small town America, making huge profits for the local governments, and providing employment to a lot of people, especially union. Anything that might jeopardize that is going to face a lot of pressure from the congressional representatives for that area.

tremendulo• 9 years ago

Honestly I think I'd get used to the smell and the sight of animal flesh within a few weeks. But I guess the hard part, aside from the normal stresses and strains of low-paid work, would be wearing rubber gloves, plastic overalls, etc, in a humid environment.

blfr• 9 years ago

How can a large company openly hire illegal immigrants, who even take part in court proceedings, without any consequences?

anonymous51337• 9 years ago

It is all about risk vs reward. Illegals are willing to work and do stuff that other workers won't do. So the owners end up saving money. If immigration busts them then they get fined and then they replace the workers. The amount saved vs the payment of the fine still nets them savings. Immigration does not enforce the law thoroughly.

Chris20482• 9 years ago

It should initiate an investigation into the company though...

barry-cotter2• 9 years ago

There’s no political consensus in the US on enforcing immigration laws. The only position that won’t get anybody condemning you in the Democratic Party is Open Borders and there are plenty of Republicans willing to support any local business.

Sanctuary cities exist. Large swathes of the US populace regard restricting immigration as immoral and plenty of the rest have no particular desire to do so. Why would there be consequences in those circumstances?

Chris20482• 9 years ago

Larger swathes, but not the majority. I can't see how the law can just be flaunted like this, for all the crying about Trump...

Cleanup at the slaughterhouse

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