Tennessee Firm Fined $650k for Illegally Employing Children in Meat Processing Plants

A Tennessee-based sanitizing company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal probe revealed that it illegally hired at least two dozen youngsters to clean hazardous meat processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia.

The US Department of Labor reported Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC has entered into a consent judgment in which the company agrees to pay roughly $650,000 in civil fines and a court-ordered mandate to no longer employ minors. According to the February filing, federal agents suspected at least four youngsters were still working at a slaughterhouse in Iowa on December 12.

Because of the risks, US law bans employers from hiring persons under the age of 18 to work in meat processing plants. The Labor Department said that Fayette employed 15 minor workers at a Perdue Farms facility in Accomac, Virginia, and at least nine at Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa.

The job entailed disinfecting dangerous equipment such as head splitters, jaw pullers, and meat bandsaws in hazardous environments where animals were killed and rendered. The inquiry alleges that a 14-year-old was severely hurt while cleaning the drumstick packaging line belt at the Virginia plant.

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

The deal states that Fayette will employ a third-party consultant to monitor the company’s compliance with child labor rules for at least three years, as well as organize training. The company must also establish a hotline where people may raise concerns about child labor abuse.

A representative for Fayette told The Associated Press in February that the company is participating in the inquiry and has a “zero-tolerance policy for minor labor.”

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

According to the latest Labor Department figures, the number of youngsters unlawfully employed in the United States has surged by 88% since 2019.