Death on a Dairy Farm
Summary
Date Reported: 15 Feb 2023
Location: United States of America
Companies
D&K Dairy - EmployerAffected
Total individuals affected: 3
Migrant & immigrant workers: ( 3 - Nicaragua , Agriculture/food/beverage/tobacco/fishing: General , Gender not reported )Issues
Deaths , Precarious/Unsuitable Living Conditions , Occupational Health & Safety , Access to Non-Judicial RemedyResponse
Response sought: Yes, by Journalists
Action taken: In August 2020, the boy’s father filed a wrongful death lawsuit against D&K Dairy, its insurer, Rural Mutual Insurance, and the skid steer driver. The boy’s father believes the farm should be held responsible. An engineer hired by the father’s attorneys to inspect the skid steer said the machine’s horn, back-up alarm and rear lights were not working. The farm’s owners and Rural Mutual Insurance declined to comment about the accident to the journalists. A later article released in June 2023 states the boy’s father settled the lawsuit against the farm. In November 2023, Wisconsin officials approved reforms that respond to the flawed investigation that led to the boy’s father being wrongly accused. The reforms include USD 8 million funding for farmworker housing, and measures to improve access to government services for people who do not speak English.
Source type: News outlet
…Ingolia’s interview with Rodríguez, as halting and incoherent as it was, became the foundation of the official account of the night of July 26, 2019 — Rodríguez accidentally killed his son.
That account would be repeated by other agencies, publicized by local media outlets and remembered by farmers in the area and residents who speak only English.
It is an account that torments Rodríguez because, he said, it isn’t true…
What happened to Jefferson and his father is a story of an accumulation of failures: a broken immigration system that makes it difficult for people to come here even as entire industries depend on their labor, small farms that largely go unexamined by safety inspectors, and a law enforcement system that’s ill equipped to serve people who don’t speak English…
It is an open secret in the dairy industry that many workers lack authorization to work in the U.S. They get jobs using fake papers that employers, knowingly or not, accept. “The less I know the better,” one farmer in Dane County told ProPublica…
the workforce at Wisconsin dairies has shifted; where it was once mainly immigrants from Mexico, it now includes asylum-seekers and other immigrants from Central America. Around Dane County, many are Nicaraguan…