The Escalating, Bloody Exploitation of Meat Workers Under Trump

JBS , one of the largest meat processing companies in the country, was the single largest contributor with a colossal $5 million gift to President Trump ’s inauguration fund.

JBS has long been engaged in sordid monopolist behavior: It has paid over $150 million in settlements over price-fixing allegations, has an extensive list of workplace safety violations too long to summarize.

The NSIS allowed meat companies to reduce the number of independent federal inspectors on the processing line, instead replacing them with company-employed inspectors.

The implications for food safety of an accelerated and self-regulated meatpacking process are clear.

Meatpackers have already become infamous for abusive factory conditions that violate their workers’ human rights.

When the Packers and Stockyards Act was written in 1921 , just five companies controlled meat markets: Swift, Armour , Cudahy , Wilson , and Morris .

Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, an infamous 1906 work of muckraker journalism, horrified the public with vivid descriptions of children being crammed into dangerous machinery.