A US company has been fined $650,000 for illegally hiring children to clean meat processing plants

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Tennessee-based plumbing company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal investigation found it illegally hired at least two dozen children to clean dangerous meat processing plants in Iowa and Virginia.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC has entered a consent judgment in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and a court order to stop employing minors. The February filing showed that federal investigators believed that at least four children were still working at an Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.

U.S. law prohibits companies from hiring people under 18 to work in meat processing plants because of the dangers.

The Labor Department alleged that Fayette employed 15 underage workers at a Perdue Farms plant in Accomac, Virginia, and at least nine at Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa. The work included disinfecting hazardous equipment such as head splitters, jaw pullers and meat band saws in hazardous conditions that kill and exploit animals.

According to the investigation, a 14-year-old was seriously injured while cleaning the drumstick packing line at the plant in Virginia.

Perdue Farms and Seaboard Triumph Foods announced in February that they had terminated their contracts with Fayette.

The agreement requires Fayette to hire an outside consultant to monitor the company’s compliance with child labor laws and provide training for at least three years. The company must also establish a hotline for individuals to report concerns about child labor abuse.

A spokesman for Fayette told the Associated Press in February that the company was cooperating with the investigation and had a “zero-tolerance policy for marginal workers.”

The Department of Labor has highlighted a growing list of child labor violations across the country, including the fatal mauling of a 16-year-old working at a poultry plant in Mississippi, the death of a 16-year-old following an accident at a sawmill in Wisconsin and the last year’s report on more than 100 children illegally employed by Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) at 13 meat processing plants. PSSI paid over $1.5 million in civil penalties.

The latest statistics from the Department of Labor show that the number of children employed illegally in the U.S. has increased by 88% since 2019.