Deregulate!

[Admin]

We have The Jungle to thank for certain food-safety regulations today. Protections for meat-industry workers, though, would come later—and President Trump has been trying to undo even that modest progress. His administration last year authorized faster “line speeds” (the number of animals killed per minute) for poultry plants, and began looking into doing the same for beef. New U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations that take effect in December will allow the same at pork plants, while also cutting 40 percent of government inspectors and delegating inspections to employees, who may not have undergone any kind of training in food safety.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and an advocacy group, Public Citizen, last week sued the administration over the new rules, saying that faster line speeds will increase worker injuries. That’s a certainty. As The Guardian noted in 2018, “US meatpacking workers are already three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker,” with pork and beef workers almost seven times more likely to sustain repetitive strain injuries from slicing and hauling. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the injury rate for meatpacking workers is 2.4 times higher than the national average for all industries. Trump is taking an already dangerous, dehumanizing job, and making it even more so..

Trump Turns Back the Clock in America’s Meat Plants | The New Republic

• The Jungle is Upton Sinclair's epic novel about the meatpacking industry at the turn of the 20th century