In marketing research, a well-known and frustrating conundrum is the disconnect between what researchers call attitudes and behaviors — what survey respondents say they do versus what they actually do.

Meat processors see this every day in studies that show consumers are “very interested” in organic/“natural”/NAE products, even “willing to pay” a certain amount more for those products. Meanwhile, actual sales data prove that consumers reliably shop on price, period.

I’ll tell you where else this disconnect shows up in the meat industry: In the difference between what processors say they do and what they actually do.

Let’s look at the renewed emphasis on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Since the beginning of the year, there have been some 30 such operations targeting immigrant workers whom ICE had reason to believe were working illegally. Three of those raids involved meat processors or producers.

The legal dust is far from settled on these events. As yet, ICE’s affadavits still are mostly allegations of unlawful employment of undocumented immigrants and related charges. The allegations may not stick; Salem, Ohio-based Fresh Mark, for one, was the first in the state to partner with ICE in the voluntary ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers (IMAGE) program. Participating companies must meet employment verification policies to ensure a lawful workforce, among other IMAGE program standards. If the company stuck to the program’s requirements, it ought to escape any fines and convictions.

But let’s consider the owner of Southeastern Provision, a Tennessee slaughterhouse raided by U.S. immigration officials in April. James Brantley filed guilty pleas covering two counts of willful failure to collect or pay employment taxes, one count of wire fraud and one count of employment of unauthorized aliens. Brantley admitted to avoiding nearly $1.3 million in taxes, hiring at least 150 undocumented immigrants and withdrawing an estimated $25 million in cash from a local bank for several years to pay the workers on a weekly basis.

Brantley could face a maximum sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Processors, and the associations and organizations that represent the industry, are loud and proud in defense of the lengths to which they’ve gone to stay on the right side of employment law. And, for that matter, humane handling regulations, occupational safety, food safety research, compensation and other sticky wickets of meat processing that are too numerous to mention individually.

But Brantley didn’t. He flouted the law in several major ways over a period of years.

It strains credulity to think that Southeastern Provision operated this way for so long before somebody outside the company got suspicious. It strains credulity to think that others in the industry, or in the area, didn’t enable its illegal practices at least by looking the other way.

At least that’s how consumers, activists, lawmakers, retailers and restaurateurs see it. And even if they trust and are loyal to the specific processing companies they work with, these events create a big disconnect in their minds between what the meat industry says it does, and what it actually does.

And that isn’t good news for anybody.

When processors flout the law

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