NBC has completed a year-long investigation into children working in slaughterhouses. It’s available on YouTube titled Slaughterhouse Children. I urge you to watch it.

Arkansas and other states

This comes to my mind particularly because of large Tyson chicken processing plants nearby. And it’s also on my mind because the Sarah Huckabee Sanders administration has signed into a law a measure that makes it easier for teens younger than 16 to work without a Department of Labor waiver.

Rules governing hours, jobs

Let’s be clear. The U.S. Department of Labor has regulations governing the types of jobs children may get and stipulates they cannot work past 9 p.m. But apparently the practice is different. Children are in danger. Laws are being violated.

The NBC story

The NBC story focuses upon the death of Duvon Perez, 16, who was crushed in a machine while working at night in a slaughterhouse in Hattiesburg, MS. He had come from Guatemala as an unaccompanied minor during the Covid shutdown. He was admitted to the U.S. under a Trump administration provision then that allowed unaccompanied minors to enter the U.S. Some 250,000 unaccompanied minors have entered that way in the last decade, almost half from Guatemala. The outflow of children from Guatemala has been so high that 1,500 schools in the country have closed.

Apparently many came

According to NBC,  the demand for labor was also high at the time, making what the network called “a perfect storm” for children and packing plants. Young Duvon was hired using a fake ID belonging to a 32 year old. He cleaned the packing house by night and attended middle school by day, a few years behind his classmates. While the plant can cite his use of a 32 year old’s id, a look at the child’s picture on the video makes it clear he isn’t 32.

Tragic but revealing

Duvon was sending money back home to Guatemala where his family waited. After he repaid his smugglers in a year or two, they were hoping to join him. But his case is just one of many concerning children illegally working in slaughterhouses. The Department of Labor says the number of children working in those illegally is up by 88 percent in recent years. And the fines of $15,000 per offense isn’t enough to stop improper hiring. One company, PSSI, was recently fined a whopping $1.5 million for hiring children, although the firm has denied knowingly doing so.

Meat, poultry are bloody, messy businesses

The meat and poultry business is bloody and messy, according to news reports. And every night across America some 1,300 slaughterhouses must be cleaned from top to bottom to be ready for the next day. The floors and surfaces are bloody. Machines are delicate and dangerous. Youngsters may not understand the danger. Animal parts are everywhere. And the cleanup falls to those who need the work, too often children. The pay, by the way, is better than minimum wage, making the job more attractive.

Mar-Jac/Chick-Fil-A

You might think of all of this the next time you bite into a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, other fast food treats or even at the meat case in your grocers. The company that prepares Chick-Fil-A chicken is Mar-Jac, which has been under investigation by the Department of Labor. It processes 2 million chickens per week. But other companies also have culpability, according to the NBC report, including Tyson, Perdue and others.

3,800 illegal child workers

In just 2022 alone, the U.S. Department of Labor found 3,800 children illegally employed at 835 companies.

Where are the parents?

Where are the parents, you ask. Many are still in Guatemala or the country of origin. Many are here and desperate for added income. But few of them expect their children to be illegally employed in dangerous situations in the middle of the night, then expected to go to school in the morning.