ST.PAUL, Minn. — The giant Smithfield pork processor has agreed to pay $2 million for child labor violations at its St. James plant in southwest Minnesota. The state labor agency said Smithfield had employed at least 11 children, ages 14 to 17, contrary to child protection laws. All 11 performed potentially dangerous work, the Minnesota Labor and Industry Department said. The $2 million administrative penalty is the largest in the history of child labor enforcement. Smithfield, based Virginia, did not admit liability under the settlement, claiming that all 11 children had dlied about their ages. Even so, the company agreed not to let it happen again.
Verbatim
Nicole Blissenbach, state labor commissioner: “The agreement sends a strong message to employers, including in the meat-processing industry, that child labor violations will not be tolerated in Minnesota.”
Smithfield profile
Although headquartered in Virginia, Smithfield has been owned by Shuanghui Group of China since 2013. The acquisition made Shanghui the largest overseas owner of U.S. farmland. Besides owning 500 U.S. farms, Smithfield contracts with 2,000 independent farms to raise pigs. The company is the largest pork producer globally with butchering operations also in Britain, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. Annual revenue exceeds $14 billion. Brands include Eckrich, Farmland, Morrell, Nathan’s and Healthy Ones.
Butchering industry abuse
Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book “The Jungle,” on horrific meat-packing industry exploitation of immigrants, led to federal laws to reform the industry. Were Sinclair still alive, he would have enough for a new chapter. Among recent exploitation in the butchering industry:
> Packers Saniation of Kieler in southwest Wisconsin, a slaughterhouse cleaning service, paid fines of $1.5 million for hiring 100-plus children in dangerous jobs at 13 sites across the country.
> Fayette Janitorial, a Tennessee-based sanitation company, paid $165,000 for hiring two dozen children to clean dangerous meat-processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia.
> Mar-Jac Poultry paid $165,000 after a 16-year-old boy died working in a Mississippi processing plant.
> Tony Downs, a meat processor, paid $100,00 for hiring children as young as 13 at its Madelia plant, west of Mankato.
Upton Sinclair. His classic story is about the abuse of impoverished Lithuanian immigrants in he Chicago meat-packing industry in the early 1900s. The abuses turned readers’ stomachs and led to legal reforms requiring sanitation in the industry.
Other upshots
The book also hastened new child labor restrictions. In 1933, the book became a target of Nazi book-burning because of Sinclair’s socialist perspective and criticsm of big industry. “The Jungle” remains widely read as a classic in American literature and journalism and as testament to the societal value of free speech.