Kids Are Working in America’s Meatpacking Plants

I used to work in a meat processing plant doing cleanup when I was about 16. It is a very dangerous job. You have to take machinery apart to clean it and if you are careless you can easily lose fingers/hands/arms/other appendages. My least favorite part of the job was cleaning the bandsaws. You have to take the the blade which is about 10 feet long out of the machine (it's razor sharp so on a good day you don't cut yourself very badly) and clean out what I can only call "meat sawdust" out of every nook and cranny of the machine. Then you have to feed the blade back into the saw. That was probably the least dangerous machine to clean. The meat grinders were also a pain in the ass because you have to remove a giant spiral cylinder with razor sharp edges, again very easy to lose at least a finger if you're not careful

I wouldn't ever want my child to be doing that job, or anyone else's

We really should have made The Jungle required reading

Teen Vogue really on some shit lately.

Between them and Rolling Stone the last few years...

"Well guys, looks like the grey lady is doing a 1935 again, so Jackson, I'm gonna need you to pivot from writing relationship quizzes to the child labor beat. Ada, Frank, can you handle best makeup tutorials and genocide? Allison, I know you're on concert reviews, how would you feel about also picking up the investigation on coal coke emissions?"

Fucking good on them, I'm sure that there have always been people doing good work at these publications, but it seems like they've had to really expand their purview recently to cover these giant gaps.

Dinosaur chicken nuggets: made by kids for kids.

But they yearn for it /s

You're saying kids are packing my mea....

Nevermind.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Also, if you think a child will ever clean something well enough to process food!? US food production is disgusting.

Everyone should read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

It was written almost 120 years ago, and shows just how horrendous these working conditions used to be before the FDA existed. Everyone who wants to cripple the ability of the FDA to regulate these plants wants those kinds of inhumane working conditions back.

It has a socialist message in the second half, but remember - socialism doesn't replace democracy. Socialism replaces Capitalism.

What, I thought it was the illegal immigrants taking all the jobs.. Nevermind, I read the article and it's migrant kids they're talking about.

And don’t get me started on the white trash managers and supervisors in those places. Literally run by some strange asshole thug druggie meth types. Oscar Mayer plant in west/southern Illinois is absolutely crazy.

Those kids are earning a Honest Living!

-Republicans who think Drag Queens are DESTROYING our Youth!

I'll just leave this here

another case for veganism

When your party fellates Big Business so hard you have to provide underage workers for them...

Ah finally, the Good Ole Days

Flashbacks to Left Behind

Not only that I'm sure they are making close to minimum wage. Raise that and families might make enough to not need to have their children need to work

So excited for The Jungle 2

are you still at it? unbelievable.

Meat is a choice and it's a bad one.