Meatpacking

Hawa Farah was living in Minneapolis three years ago making $8 an hour at a bakery when her fiance, Hussein Hussein, got a call about good jobs that paid better. So the couple, like many Somali immigrants who follow work around the country, headed 600 miles southwest to Nebraska, state slogan: "The Good Life." They settled in Grand Island, a blue-collar railroad town on the flat Midwestern prairie. They got married and brightened their worn apartment with plastic flowers and colorful rugs.

A California Assembly bill that would require anyone who videotapes, photographs or records incidents of animal cruelty to turn over the evidence to authorities within 48 hours - or be charged with an infraction of the law - sounds like a tough new measure to crack down on abuse. It's not. In reality, it's one of a crop of disturbing "ag-gag" bills being introduced across the country. Although AB 343 is not as bad as some others that ban outright recording and videotaping at animal facilities, it would effectively hamper animal welfare undercover investigators and employee whistle-blowers who are collecting information on systemic animal cruelty at meatpacking plants, slaughterhouses, livestock ranches and farms.

Citing troubles due to the discovery of mad cow disease in Washington state, Swift & Co. said Friday that it would suspend its second shift next week at two meatpacking plants. A total of 2,100 employees will be affected at the plants in Grand Island and Greeley, Colo., said Jim Herlihy, a spokesman for Swift, the nation's third-largest beef and pork processor. Herlihy said the suspension would begin Monday, and employees would return to work Feb. 23.

Hawa Farah was living in Minneapolis three years ago making $8 an hour at a bakery when her fiance, Hussein Hussein, got a call about good jobs that paid better. So the couple, like many Somali immigrants who follow work around the country, headed 600 miles southwest to Nebraska, state slogan: "The Good Life." They settled in Grand Island, a blue-collar railroad town on the flat Midwestern prairie. They got married and brightened their worn apartment with plastic flowers and colorful rugs.

U.S. meatpackers on Monday offered to test one in every 300 cattle carcasses for a deadly strain of the E. coli bacteria to help safeguard the nation's beef supply and keep tougher federal rules at bay. The experimental program was hurriedly developed by the industry after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in January that it might broaden a federal policy to make more kinds of beef subject to strict food safety rules.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined John Morrell & Co. $4.3 million Friday for "willfully ignoring a crippling illness" that struck more than 40% of the employees in its Sioux Falls, S. D., meatpacking plant. The fine, the largest in OSHA's 17-year history, came after a long investigation of worker complaints.

Federal investigators were ordered Friday to investigate five meatpacking plants accused of processing beef contaminated with dirt, hair, animal wastes and other foreign material. Agriculture Secretary Edward R. Madigan said he was launching the review after a television broadcast Thursday by ABC's "Prime Time Live" raised questions about inspection procedures at the plants and allegations of contamination.

The Labor Department Thursday took a first step toward extending federal regulation of workplace safety to the world of ergonomics in an effort to stem repetitive-motion injuries. At a press conference here, Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole unveiled a set of "voluntary" guidelines for guarding against such injuries in the meatpacking industry, an estimated 30% of whose workers are hurt annually.

"You're taking us where?" my parents asked apprehensively as I led them across a treeless expanse of rough cobblestones and past thickets of low-slung red-brick buildings in a state of disrepair. They were on a rare visit from their home in Palm Springs, and I had just announced that I was taking them to dinner at a diner in the Lower West Side's Meatpacking District. Until fairly recently, the mere mention of this tiny section of Manhattan triggered trepidation.

Facing low demand, tougher competition and a profit squeeze, the nation's beef-packing industry is slicing production and preparing for what some analysts say could be long-term problems. Beef packing's Big Three companies--IBP, ConAgra and Cargill --have reduced operating hours or temporarily shut plants in recent weeks. Among the plants affected: IBP's beef plants in Lexington, Dakota City and West Point; ConAgra's Monfort Inc.

A hodgepodge crowd gathers here twice a week for handouts just steps from City Hall and an empty kosher deli. Outside the local food pantry snakes a line of Guatemalans wearing court-ordered ankle monitors, imported workers from the Pacific island of Palau and unemployed town natives -- almost all there because of a dramatic raid that has left a deep mark in the way the U.S. views and deals with illegal immigration.

A kosher meatpacking plant that was the site of one of the nation's largest immigration raids was fined nearly $10 million over accusations that it violated state labor laws. Iowa Labor Commissioner Dave Neil assessed the civil penalties against Agriprocessors in Postville for what he called repeated violations of wage laws from January 2006 to June 2008. The fines are the latest trouble for Agriprocessors since the raid in which 389 people were arrested. In September, the plant owner and managers were charged with 9,311 misdemeanors alleging they illegally hired minors and let children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment.

Luisa Lopez said no one asked about her age when she started working at the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant. She was 17, and within days she was on a fast-moving poultry production line, wielding a long, sharp pair of scissors. "They never told me how to use them," Luisa said in Spanish. "Things moved so fast, and I was always worried I would cut myself." Yesenia Cordero, whose round baby face makes her look even younger than her 16 years, also said age was never an issue at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant, which state officials allege employed dozens of underage workers in an "egregious" violation of labor laws.

The spacious new homes and pristine commercial strip that have transformed this northeastern Iowa town are a testament to the success of Agriprocessors Inc., the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant and the reason for a thriving local community of Hasidic Jews. But a federal raid this month that exposed a seemingly tacit agreement between the plant and an illegal-immigrant workforce has residents worried about the town's future. This community has fashioned itself as a cosmopolitan center on the Plains, where long-bearded rabbis, Latin American immigrants and German Lutherans have learned to live side by side.

The president of the Chino meatpacking plant that triggered the largest beef recall in U.S. history admitted Wednesday that crippled cows, which are more likely to carry disease, probably entered the food supply at his company. "Obviously my system broke down," said Steve Mendell, president of Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., once a major supplier to the school lunch program. Mendell initially told a House oversight subcommittee that "downer" cows at his plant "were not slaughtered, ground or sold."

Agriculture Secretary Edward T. Schafer sparred with Senate lawmakers Thursday, insisting that regulations governing inspections of slaughterhouses are sufficient to ensure the safety of the nation's meat supply. Schafer rejected senators' calls to completely ban from slaughter any cattle unable to walk. "Downer" cows are at higher risk of carrying E. coli and salmonella bacteria and of having the wasting neurological illness known as mad cow disease.

By the end of the week, it was hard to deny that something was wrong in the meatpacking industry: Monday, March 5: Specialty meat processor Doskocil Cos. of Hutchinson, Kan., filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. its major competitors--the so-called Big Three meatpackers--are all angling to snap up the company's slaughtering facilities, a Doskocil spokesman said. Thursday, March 8: Farmstead Foods of Albert Lea, Minn.

Furthering the consolidation of California's agriculture sector, Foster Farms, the state's largest chicken producer, has agreed to purchase the chicken business of its largest rival, El Monte-based Zacky Farms. The deal would give Livingston-based Foster a dominant position in the poultry aisles of California supermarkets, and analysts expect it to be subject to intense antitrust scrutiny. Terms of the deal between the two privately held companies were not disclosed.

Home is a shabby apartment building on the outskirts of town. Work is the late shift at a meatpacking plant. This is Degmo Ali's life. And it seems to have been misplaced in this rural town: Dressed in ornate African garb, the graceful 24-year-old is hard to picture on a slaughterhouse floor in Nebraska. "I want to go back" to Somalia, she says.

The last U.S. plant to slaughter horses for human consumption will remain closed after a federal judge on Thursday dismissed its challenge to a new Illinois law that shut it down. The Cavel International Inc. plant in DeKalb closed last week after U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Kapala denied its request to continue operating while the case was being considered.