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For Immediate Release:
Contact
Joseph Rendiero
(202) 776-1566
jrendeiro@nclr.org
Agency’s Proposal Remains Threat to Worker Safety
During a House hearing this week, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials misconstrued the findings of a federal report examining work conditions at a South Carolina poultry plant, possibly leading lawmakers to wrongly believe that a USDA proposal to speed up evisceration lines at poultry plants won’t affect worker safety, according to a coalition of worker rights and food safety groups.
The misleading testimony was offered during a House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this week. The USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service cited a report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as evidence that their proposal to increase processing line speeds in poultry plants from the current maximum of 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute would not endanger workers.
USDA’s proposed new regulation also would endanger consumer safety by removing hundreds of federal food safety inspectors from plants, giving plant employees the responsibility for spotting and removing tainted chicken from the line.
The following statements can be attributed to the coalition:
“The supposed evidence the USDA offered to support its proposal to speed up poultry processing lines is a report that examined one poultry plant that wasn’t even operating under the conditions the agency has proposed. In other words, the USDA has yet to show their proposal won’t harm workers.”
The NIOSH report – Evaluation of Musculoskeletal Disorders and Traumatic Injuries Among Employees at a Poultry Processing Plant – evaluated working conditions at a South Carolina plant, which was not part of the USDA’s pilot program for its proposal. The plant was examined and a report issued after it requested a waiver from the USDA to combine two evisceration lines into one.
Key points that prevent this report from supporting the USDA’s proposal include the following issues with the report:
- The South Carolina plant did not make the line-related changes that plants will likely make under the USDA’s proposed rule.
- NIOSH’s report does not reflect the effects of an increase in work speed, but does show the hazards of consistently fast work speeds. After the plant combined two evisceration lines into one, the number of birds processed per minute by each worker did not change, and injury rates remained unacceptably high for workers.
“It is irresponsible for USDA to conclude that this single report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is a green light for increasing line speeds. There are critical differences at this poultry plant that make comparisons to the USDA’s proposal impossible.
“The report, however, confirms that poultry processing workers suffer extraordinarily high rates of painful and often permanently crippling injuries under current processing line speeds.” Key report findings include the following:
- Forty-two percent of workers evaluated for the report had evidence of painful and often permanently disabling carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Moderate or severe mononeuropathy, a type of nerve damage, was found in 80 percent of workers with carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Reports of hand or wrist symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders from workers on the evisceration line increased from 53 percent of the workers to 62 percent after the evisceration line reconfiguration.
- NIOSH recommended that the employer design job tasks at the plant so that they are below the recommended repetition threshold limits to minimize the risk for developing carpal tunnel syndrome. NIOSH specifically recommended reducing the speed of processing lines to reduce repetition.
“The findings of the recent NIOSH report do not justify the USDA moving forward with its proposed rule to increase evisceration line speeds and the removal of food safety inspectors from those lines.”
Coalition members include the Center for Effective Government, Center for Progressive Reform, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Coalition of Poultry Workers, Food & Water Watch, Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, NAACP, NCLR, Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, Northwest Arkansas Worker Justice Center, Oxfam America, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Western North Carolina Worker Center.
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