Meat workers health problems

Meat is not just bad for the animals slaughtered, of course, and for the humans who consume it. It’s bad for the humans who work in the meat industry too.

Few people realize that, in a country like the USA, meatpacking is the most dangerous occupation.

In the year 2000, about 25 percent of all employees of American meatpacking plants had non-fatal occupational injuries or job-related illnesses: that is as many as 4 times the national average for all private industry sectors.

In addition, serious injuries and illnesses (measured by lost workdays) in the meatpacking sector are almost 5 times the national average in all private industry sectors (14.3 percent versus 3 percent).

The frequency of disorders associated with repeated traumas, mainly back problems and tendinitis, is an astonishing 30 times higher than the private-industry national average. This is the effect produced by the working pace of some modern slaughterhouses, which “process” as many as 400 cattle per hour, and in which some workers make up to 10,000 repetitive knife cuts every day.

So much for the idea that man is a “natural” meat-eater. Meat seems to be associated with diseases and unnatural lifestyles wherever it occurs.