Federal investigators found nearly a dozen children working dangerous night shifts at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, Iowa, the U.S. Department of Labor announced.
The U.S. Department of Labor said that from at least September 2019 to September 2023, 11 children were employed by Qvest, a sanitation contractor in Guymon, Oklahoma, who allegedly used caustic cleaners to damage the Seaboard Triumph Foods plant. Sterilize machines, pliers, band saws, neck scissors, and other equipment.
Federal law prohibits minors from working in meat processing jobs due to the increased risk of injury.
Seaboard Foods is one of the largest pork producers in the United States. In addition to Iowa, Seaboard Foods, a subsidiary of Seaboard Corporation, has operations in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas and Doing business in Utah and Mexico.
“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods' history of children working illegally at its Sioux City facility since at least September 2019. Despite a change of sanitation contractors, children have continued to work in hazardous occupations at the facility,” the company said. said Western Region Administrator Michael Lazzeri.
Qvest must pay $171,919 in civil penalties for child labor and take steps to prevent the illegal employment of minors again.
Qvest and Seaboard did not respond to requests for comment.
Nonetheless, the illegal employment of children under 18 in hazardous work in meat and poultry slaughtering and processing operations is not uncommon in the industry or at the Seaboard Foods plant in Sioux Falls.
Seaboard contracted with Fayette Cleaning Services in September 2023 to handle sanitation of its facilities. After taking over the plant's sanitation services contract, Fayette allegedly rehired some of the children previously employed by Qvest earlier this year with a Somerville, Tenn., contractor. Found to be hiring The U.S. Department of Labor said there were nine minors at the Sioux Falls facility.
Fayette also allegedly employed 15 children, the youngest of whom was 13, at the Perdue Farms processing plant in Accomack, Virginia, where a 14-year-old was seriously injured. The company said Perdue terminated Fayette's contract before the Labor Department filed court documents.
Are immigrant children cleaning U.S. slaughterhouses?
The development is part of an ongoing investigation into whether immigrant children are cleaning up U.S. slaughterhouses. Less than a year ago, the government fined another health provider $1.5 million for employing more than 100 children – 13 to 17 years old — 13 meat processing plants in eight states.
The Labor Department launched an investigation after a released report detailed immigrant children working overnight hours for contractors at a poultry processing facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. A report in The New York Times Magazine in December detailed children using acid and pressure hoses to clear blood, grease and feathers from equipment.
The New York Times report included details of a 14-year-old boy who was injured while cleaning a conveyor belt in the deboning area of a Perdue slaughterhouse in rural Virginia. The eighth-grader is one of thousands of Mexican and Central American children who cross the border alone to work in dangerous jobs.
But it’s not just migrant children who take on illegal and dangerous work. Michael Schuls, a 16-year-old high school student, died in an accident last summer Trapped in machinery at a Wisconsin sawmill.
From the elevated waterslides at Beach Park in Jacksonville, Florida, to the sawmills of Clark Ranch, Tennessee, federal investigators have found children across the country working illegal hours and performing dangerous illegal tasks. In May, federal investigators discovered that a 13-year-old girl allegedly worked up to 60 hours a week Assembly line in Luverne, Alabama.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor found that a window cleaning company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, illegally employed three children to clean residential windows and gutters and install Christmas lights. One of the children was seriously injured after falling from a roof and required surgery. . Another Department of Labor case settled last month involved children operating and cleaning a meat grinder and driving a motor vehicle to make deliveries for a pizza restaurant in Iron River, Wisconsin.
The agency said the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division oversaw 736 investigations that uncovered child labor violations affecting 4,030 children in fiscal year 2024.
In addition to the federal government, Massachusetts has recently cracked down on companies that violate child labor laws, saying operators of dozens of Burger King franchises in the state allegedly had minors working longer hours than allowed by law. Separately, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell's office said last week that she had reached a settlement with the owner of a New Jersey-based Popeyes franchise in Massachusetts to resolve similar allegations.
