Workers at poultry and hog processing plants are at high risk of injury and musculoskeletal disorders fueled by heavy workloads and fears of job loss, according to two independent studies of the industries released Friday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Eighty-one percent of poultry workers and 46 percent of swine workers faced increased risks of developing disorders such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel, the studies found.
The problems, however, were linked more closely to the volume of animals the workers processed – the so-called “piece rate” – than the assembly line speed that had prompted the two-year studies.
“Pain was common among interviewed workers and was accepted by workers as part of the job,” the study on the swine industry concluded. “Workers performing a range of jobs described experiencing ongoing pain with one long-term employee stating that he ‘still hurts every day.’”
The separate studies of the poultry and swine industries were commissioned by the USDA after worker advocacy groups challenged new rules that had separately allowed the two industries to implement faster line speeds.
The findings could lead to increased efforts under the incoming Trump administration to allow faster speeds for the processing lines.
Debbie Berkowitz, a worker safety and health policy expert who was not affiliated with the study, called the meat industry “among the harshest working environments in U.S. manufacturing.”
“Hundreds and often thousands of workers stand close together, side by side, in cold, damp, dangerously loud conditions wielding knives and scissors as they cut up chickens and hogs into the portions we buy at the supermarket,” said Berkowitz, a former senior policy advisor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). “Almost all the cut-up work in meat and poultry plants is done manually.”
Berkowitz noted that the study did not assess the high risk of cuts and amputations faced by workers. Both studies acknowledged that researchers likely sampled healthier workers due to the high industry turnover rates.
The studies, conducted by researchers at the University of California San Francisco, evaluated 1,621 workers, including 1,047 at 11 poultry plants and 574 at six swine plants.
The swine study reported that more than 75% of workers were male and 69% identified as Hispanic. More than 80 percent were born outside the United States, and more than 90% reported a language other than English as their primary language.
Key findings of the two studies include that:
- 81% of poultry workers were at increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).
- 40% of poultry workers reported experiencing “moderate to severe work-related pain” during the past 12 months.
- 20% of poultry plants had dangerously high exposure to peracetic acid, a chemical that can cause irreversible skin and eye damage.
- 20% of poultry workers reported taking time off because of pain, but more than 40% did not report the pain to a supervisor or nurse.
- 46% of workers processing swine were at high risk for musculoskeletal disorders.
- More than 42% of swine-processing workers reported “moderate to severe upper extremity pain” during the 12 months prior to the site visit.
- Nearly half of all swine-processing workers were at increased risk of injury when their establishments operated at an increased line speed.
The side-by-side studies offered virtually identical recommendations for improving the health of workers, including establishing best practices for the industry, creating fatigue allowances to give workers recovery time and the targeting of job-specific “piece rates.”
“Implementing changes that reduce work pace, hand force, or both, will reduce upper extremity MSD risk,” both studies concluded in their recommendations.
The studies also recommended the creation of an industry and labor safety and health consortium similar to those set up by the automotive industry.
“Solutions come from collaborative efforts to develop and implement industry best practices,” the poultry processing study concluded, with wording similar to conclusions reached in the swine plant study. “The evaluation of automated knife sharpening, optimal knife rotation schedules, and using wearable devices to assist in ergonomic risk and exposure assessment and training of workers are examples of factors that could be researched collaboratively through such a consortium.”
Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents more than 15,000 poultry workers, called on the USDA and OSHA to mandate job modifications that decrease work speed.
“We also know that the dangers and risks go beyond the musculoskeletal injuries detailed in these reports,” Appelbaum said. “We need to protect the workers who feed America, and ensure that they aren’t treated as disposable commodities.”
Berkowitz said the studies’ findings could lead to additional waivers or rule changes that could once again allow plants to speed up their processing lines.
“It’s not a perfect study, because they just didn’t know whether the plants that were running faster could have just added workers to the line to just make sure that the risk didn’t get worse,” Berkowitz said.
“Once you get 46%, 50-60-70-80% of workers facing risks, it’s really hard to increase it,” Berkowiz said. “That’s like a large part of the plant. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to increase [the line speed], but USDA and the industry will look at it that way.”
Berkowitz said that to increase line speeds again, the USDA would have to enter into rulemaking, a lengthy endeavor that involves a period of public comment much as it did in 2019 and 2020 when it changed the rules for swine and poultry plants.
In 2019, the USDA approved new rules for swine slaughter that removed all speed caps, though a court later reinstated a cap.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread, 15 poultry plants won approval from the USDA to increase line speeds, a move known as line speed waivers. The waivers were given to plants owned by Tyson Foods, Wayne Farms, Mountaire Farms, and George’s Processing, according to a statement released at the time by the National Employment Law Project.