Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [191]
“Mexington”: For some of the positive effects of the new immigration wave, see Edwin Garcia and Ben Stocking, “Latinos on the Move to a New Promised Land,” San Jose Mercury News, August 16, 1998.
“We have three odors”: Quoted in Melody M. Loughry, “Issues Now,” North Platte Resident, January 15,1996.
the Justice Department sued IBP: See Elliot Blair Smith, “Stench Chokes Meatpacking Towns,” USA Today, February 14, 2000; “U.S. Sues Meatpacking Giant for Violating Numerous Environmental Laws in Midwest,” press release, Environmental Protection Agency, January 12, 2000.
“This agreement means”: Quoted in “Meatpacker Must Cut Hydrogen Sulfide Emissions at Nebraska Plant,” press release, Environmental Protection Agency, May 24, 2000.
166 The transcript of this meeting: “Presenting IBP, Inc., to Lexington, Nebraska: A Public Forum Conducted by the Dawson County Council for Economic Development, July 7, 1988, at the Junior High School Auditorium,” transcription by the staff of the Lauby Law Office, Lexington, Nebraska.
8. The Most Dangerous Job
This chapter is based largely on interviews that I conducted with dozens of Latino meatpacking workers in Colorado and Nebraska. I also interviewed a former slaughterhouse safety director, a former slaughterhouse nurse, former plant supervisors, and a physician whose medical practice was for years devoted to the treatment of slaughterhouse workers. All of these managerial personnel had left the meatpacking industry by choice; none had been fired; and their reluctance to use their real names in this book stems from the widespread fear of the meatpackers in rural communities where they operate. I am grateful to those who spoke with me and showed me around.
Deborah E. Berkowitz, the former director of health and safety at the UFCW, was an invaluable source of information about the workings of a modern slaughterhouse and the dangers that workers face there. Her article on meatpacking and meat processing in The Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety (Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization, 1998), cowritten with Michael J. Fagel, is a good introduction to the subject. Curt Brandt, the president of UFCW Local 22 in Fremont, Nebraska, described the various tactics he’s seen meatpacking firms use over the years to avoid compensating injured workers. Two Colorado attorneys, Joseph Goldhammer and Dennis E. Valentine, helped me understand the intricacies of their state’s workers’ comp law and described their work on behalf of injured Monfort employees. Rod Rehm, an attorney based in Lincoln, Nebraska, spent many hours depicting the conditions in his state and arranged for me to meet some of his clients. Rehm is an outspoken advocate for poor Latinos in a state where they have few political allies. Bruce L. Braley, one of the attorneys in Ferrell v. IBP, told me a great deal about the company’s behavior and sent me stacks of documents pertaining to the case. “Killing Them Softly: Work in Meatpacking Plants and What It Does to Workers,” by Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway, in Any Way You Cut It, is one of the best published accounts of America’s most dangerous job. “Here’s the Beef: Underreporting of Injuries, OSHA’s Policy of Exempting Companies from Programmed Inspections Based on Injury Record, and Unsafe Conditions in the Meatpacking Industry,” Forty-Second Report by the Committee on Government Operations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), shows the extraordinary abuses that can occur when an industry is allowed to regulate itself. After the congressional investigation, Christopher Drew wrote a terrific series of articles on meatpacking, published by the Chicago Tribune in October of 1988. The fact that working conditions have changed little