The following article ran as the Editorial in the April issue of Meatingplace magazine.

If Robert Lewis hadn’t died, I’d know not one thing about him. And I don’t feel good about that. In fact, I feel partly responsible for it.

Lewis died in an accident that occurred in the wee hours of the morning March 9 while cleaning and sanitizing a Koch Foods chicken plant in Montgomery, Ala., on the third shift. He had worked for the company for 19 years.

Details in the tragedy as of mid-March were few, other than a spokesman’s comment that Lewis “apparently did not follow the procedure he was supposed to.” Readers criticized the comment as insensitive, given the freshness of the fatality. To be fair, the same spokesman also extended the company’s sympathies to Lewis’ family and friends, and noted that Koch provided grief counselors to all affected by his death.

Still, the tragedy doesn’t show the industry in its best light, from the top executives of the largest processing companies on down to even this trade publication that covers their operations.

Lewis may very well have broken safety protocol, leading to his death. But we all know that worker safety — like food safety and so many other aspects of operations that drive this industry’s success — is only as good as a top-to-bottom, collective culture. Collective ownership of the issue, then, is key.

I’m not pointing fingers at Koch Foods. I’ve visited and written about enough companies and processing plants to know that most aspire to do a better job of creating an environment that better recognizes and respects the Robert Lewises of the industry.

Be it that, unlike Lewis, many third-shift workers are hired by third-party contractors, or simply that their work is done while most of us sleep, they are often in the distance. They are often forgotten. I can say with confidence and regret that it’s a sector of the industry we’ve largely ignored, other than when accidents like Lewis’ happen.

And so I thank one Meatingplace reader for this sobering reminder, posted in the comment section under our news account of Lewis’ death: “The heroes of the meat harvesting/processing industry are the men and who go into plants after everyone else has left to properly clean and sanitize everything so the next day can actually happen. They do not get the recognition they deserve.”

They deserve just as much recognition as has been given the day-shift workers, who rightly have been heralded in social media posts for risking their health and safety to keep plants running and producing animal proteins for the masses amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve posted some of those, as well, and we have reported heavily on the challenges of those workers.

We would like to have known more about Robert Lewis. That he worked for 19 years doing such a tough, demanding and largely thankless job for an industry strapped for labor says a lot about his work ethic and dedication to helping a company feed people in order to feed his own.

But in order to know more about the likes of Lewis, we’re going to have to start asking more questions and telling those stories. Meat processing companies can help us; please don’t hesitate to share with us (by phone or email) the stories of the people who deserve to emerge from the shadows and into the spotlight.

Who's on third?

Join for free* to continue reading.