Children illegally worked dangerous overnight shifts at pork processing plant, feds find

Federal investigators found nearly a dozen children to be working dangerous, overnight shifts at Seaboard Triumph Foods’ pork processing plant in Sioux City, Iowa, the Department of Labor announced.

Employed by Guymon, Oklahoma-based sanitation contractor Qvest, 11 kids allegedly used corrosive cleaners to sanitize head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment at the Seaboard Triumph Foods facility from at least September 2019 through September 2023, the DOL stated in a news release on Friday.

Federal law prohibits minors from working in meat processing due to an increased risk of injury. 

Seaboard Foods is among the nation’s biggest pork producers. In addition to Iowa, Seaboard Foods, a division of Seaboard Corporation, has operations in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah, and in Mexico, according to the company’s website.

“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of children working illegally in their Sioux City facility since at least September 2019. Despite changing sanitation contractors, children continued to work in dangerous occupations at this facility,” Michael Lazzeri, the Midwest regional administrator with the DOL’s Wage and Hour division, stated in the release.

Qvest must pay $171,919 in child labor civil monetary penalties and take steps to prevent it from illegally hiring minors again.

Qvest and Seaboard did not return requests for comment.

Still, children under 18 illegally employed in dangerous jobs in meat and poultry slaughtering and processing operations is not unique in the industry or to the Seaboard Foods plant in Sioux Falls.

Seaboard in September 2023 contracted Fayette Janitorial Services for sanitation work at its facility. After taking over the plant’s sanitation services contract, Fayette allegedly rehired some of the children previously employed by Qvest, with the Somerville, Tennessee-based contractor earlier this year found to be employing nine minors at the Sioux City plant, the DOL alleged.

Fayette also allegedly hired 15 children as young as 13 at a Perdue Farms processing plant in Accomac, Virginia, where a 14-year-old was severely injured. Perdue terminated its contract with Fayette before the DOL’s court filing, the company said. 

Are migrant kids cleaning U.S. slaughterhouses? 

The development is part of an ongoing probe into whether migrant kids are cleaning U.S. slaughterhouses. It also comes less than a year after the government fined another sanitation services provider $1.5 million for employing more than 100 kids —  ages 13 to 17 — at 13 meat processing plants in eight states. 

The DOL launched its investigation after a published report detailed migrant kids working overnight for contractors in poultry processing facilities on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. A New York Times Magazine story last December detailed children cleaning blood, grease and feathers from equipment with acid and pressure hoses.

The Times’ account included details of a 14-year-old boy who was maimed while cleaning a conveyor belt in a deboning area at a Perdue slaughterhouse in rural Virginia. The eighth grader was among thousands of Mexican and Central American children who have crossed the border on their own to work in dangerous jobs.

But it’s not only migrant children tasked with illegal and dangerous work. A 16-year-old high school student, Michael Schuls, died last summer after getting trapped in a machine at a Wisconsin sawmill. 

From an elevated waterslide at a Jacksonville, Florida, beach park to a sawmill in Clarkrange, Tennessee, federal investigators are finding children across the country working illegal hours and performing risky, unlawful tasks. In May, federal investigators found a 13-year-old girl allegedly working up to 60 hours a week on an assembly line in Luverne, Alabama.

More recently, the DOL found a Grand Rapids, Michigan, window cleaning company had illegally hired three kids to clean residential windows and gutters, and to install Christmas lights, with one requiring surgery after suffering serious injuries after falling from a roof. Another DOL case resolved last month involved children operating and cleaning a meat grinder and driving motor vehicles to deliver orders for a pizza restaurant in Iron River, Wisconsin.   

The DOL’s Wage and Hour division oversaw 736 investigations uncovering child labor violations affecting 4,030 children in fiscal 2024, the agency stated. 

In addition to the federal government, the state of Massachusetts recently took aim at companies violating child labor laws, citing an operator of dozens of Burger King franchise locations across the state for allegedly scheduling minors to work more than the legally allowed hours. Separately, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell reached a settlement with a New Jersey-based owner of Popeyes franchises across Massachusetts to resolve similar allegations, her office stated last week.