Walking out of the plant and into the parking lot, the photographer, who’d never been in a meat processing facility, told me he was shocked. But it wasn’t the mounds of raw meat, the loud hum or dizzying visual stimuli that might cause a newbie to pause. It was the extent to which the processor was so guarded while being photographed.

Not expecting for that to be the photographer’s first impression, I could only chuckle, and a quick thought came to mind: It was difficult enough to get certain processors to be interviewed at all, let alone to welcome a photographer inside their facilities, when I started working at Meatingplace nearly 17 years ago.

Today, it’s difficult to find a processor not willing and proud to show off their wares. The design and conditions inside of plants have improved greatly, largely by modernizing and making the jobs more livable for workers. Upgrades encompass everything from the complex to the basic, like more natural light. So, when states propose legislation that would allow processors to hire children as a means to address a labor squeeze, I fear how quickly that would drag the industry back into the dark.

Legislators behind such proposals — in meat and poultry-centric states such as Iowa and Arkansas — should drop them. Any processors supporting those legislators should rethink it, too. If any were proudly, openly employing kids not old enough to drive a car, it wouldn’t take the federal crackdown now rolling out in the Midwest to bring it to light. And so, the timing of these attempted rollbacks is as curious as the apparent thinking behind them: Lest we get caught, let’s legalize it?

Credit to our meat industry readers, though. In the many comments they have shared on the topic, they have largely condemned the idea of exposing kids as young as 14 to the potentially dangerous conditions of a meatpacking plant. And in discussions we hear at just about every meat industry conference, no one has suggested that we begin recruiting eighth graders.

Especially as the return on investment for a college education becomes more backward, I’m all for young people learning a trade and making money at it. Apprenticeships along the lines of those offered in Germany, with specific training, goals and outcomes laid out over a number of years, seem to make good sense.

But this isn’t that. This smacks of a morality-eroding, cost-cutting desperation that devalues this trade, and tarnishes its public image. Even if you’re just giving a kid a broom to sweep the floor, for a safe start, that’s a long way away from turning into a desire to work with knives and chemicals in a cold, damp meat plant. Heck, most American adults —let alone kids — just don’t want to do it.

And even back in Germany, its centuries of meat processing tradition and continued strong consumer demand for meat isn’t translating into a strong desire for butchery skills among youth who, like ours here, are increasingly estranged from manual labor. “This job is hard work,” Jörg Litgau, one of Berlin’s remaining master butchers, told the BBC in 2019. “Nobody wants to do it anymore.”

Sure, we will see a continued increase in automation, and hopefully that can offer new skills to the people that work with new technologies. But what we need to see, instead of state-by-state laws stripping child labor protections, is reformed immigration policy in Washington D.C. It’s an adult problem that will require all the adults in the room.

This article ran as the Editorial in the April issue of Meatingplace.

The children are not our future

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