The 16-year-old worker who was sucked under equipment in July and murdered in a matter of minutes was directly caused by a Mississippi slaughterhouse that supplies chicken to Chick-fil-A, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said on Tuesday.
The U.S. Labor Department’s OSHA division said that it has fined Georgia-based Mar-Jac Poultry more than $200,000 for 14 major infractions.
“Mar-Jac Poultry is aware of how dangerous the machinery they use can be when safety standards are not in place to prevent serious injury and death. The company’s inaction has directly led to this terrible tragedy, which has left so many to mourn this child’s preventable death,” OSHA Regional Administrator Kurt Petermeyer stated.
Duvan Pérez, a 16-year-old worker, was cleaning the deboning area at the Hattiesburg plant when his hand got stuck and he was pulled into the machinery. According to OSHA officials, even though a Mar-Jac manager was overseeing the area at the time of the accident, proper procedures weren’t used to disconnect power to the machine.
Pérez was the second person to accidentally die at the plant by getting caught in a machine within a two-year period.
Mar-Jac Poultry chose not to comment on the OSHA findings. However, in an October statement, the company stated that they had followed all safety procedures.
Mar-Jac attorney Larry Stine said in the previous statement,”Mar-Jac thoroughly investigated the accident and has not found any errors committed by its safety or human resources employees. It has learned many lessons from the accident and has taken aggressive steps to prevent the occurrence of another accident or hiring underage workers.”
Although a company spokesperson told in October that “we are reviewing our own procedures for investigation and response as we pursue the steps necessary to effectively hold all our suppliers to our high safety standards,” a representative for Chick-fil-A, which purchases chicken from Mar-Jac, could not be reached immediately.
Debbie Berkowitz, a workplace safety specialist and former Obama administration OSHA official stated that, “These are incredibly serious alleged safety violations that cost a child’s life — a child who was not supposed to even be exposed to this dangerous workplace. … The poor safety track record of this plant and the company is alarming — workers should not get killed in a poultry plant.”
Two investigations were started by the Labor Department after Pérez passed away. OSHA performed one investigation into the teen’s cause of death. In the second, the Wage and Hour Division of the department looked into how a 16-year-old was employed to complete the task. The bureau states that the second probe is still ongoing.
Because of the risks involved in the work, the federal government forbids hiring anybody under the age of 18 in slaughterhouses.
According to the Labor Department, the number of minors working illegally has increased dramatically across all industries and has nearly doubled since 2019. According to the agency, there are more than 800 active child labor investigations in 47 states spanning several industries.
After discovering that current Mar-Jac employees were unwilling to engage with investigators and were afraid of the repercussions, the Labor Department appealed to the public in September to assist in its child labor inquiry.
When asked if Pérez’s age of 16 instead of 32 had startled the corporation, Stine replied, Yes, they were surprised, that I can tell you. They were surprised and somewhat horrified.”
He was also questioned about if possible Labor Department sanctions have an impact on how a business operates. “I think the publicity of having something like that is far worse than the penalty. Nobody wants to be seen to have been hiring a child.”
