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Meat Packing Plants are dangerous! Should we care?

By July 1, 2024No Comments

Today’s news stories focus on rural.  Pilgrim’s Pride’s poultry plant, located in Moorefield, West Virginia, is possibly the largest chicken/meat packing plant in the U.S.   It happily accepts documented and un-documented immigrant workers for decades but takes little or no responsibility for them.  The work in these plants is often dangerous, but Pilgrim’s Pride has profited for many decades.

For people worrying about immigrants at the border, their questions would be better directed at the big corporate companies that recruit the workers.   It is true … we need the workers.  It is true … that job openings in plants like this would go begging without these workers.  It is also true that we need fast acceptance, vetting, and green cards for these workers, but in this case, it also seems true that Pilgrim’s Pride prefers undocumented, which often allows the company to avoid safety rules and other responsibilities.

Allen Siegler / Mountain State Spotlight and The Daily Yonder: In One of the Most Dangerous Workplaces in West Virginia, a Poultry Giant has Profited from Immigrant Labor for Decades

Allen Siegler / Mountain State Spotlight and The Daily Yonder In West Virginia’s ‘Poultry Capital,’ Immigrant Workers Struggle to Find the Help and Support They Need