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Article

31 Jan 2017

Author:
Tom Philpott, Mother Jones

US meat industry increasingly employees refugees, who are exposed to harmful working conditions - industry speaks out against Trump's travel ban

Original title: "Refugees Make Your Dinner. Literally. Where else are you going to find people desperate enough to work in a modern slaughterhouse?"

Of all the outrage generated by President Donald Trump's ban on refugees entering the country, the most surprising critic might be the US meat industry.

Refugees are a group just as desperate for work as undocumented migrants, but legally eligible to hold jobs.

Turns out, people fleeing desperate conditions in violence-ravaged countries have emerged as a key labor source for the nation's vast and dangerous slaughterhouses. Because meat-packing is such a high-turnover occupation, precise numbers on the makeup of its labor pool are hard to come by. The Journal reports that about a third of meat-packing workers are foreign-born, and that industry has increasingly turned to refugee populations to fill jobs. 

The head of the industry's main trade association, the North American Meat Institute, put it delicately in a statement to The Wall Street Journal: "As the administration pursues changes to the nation's refugee policies, we hope it will give careful consideration to the ramifications policy changes like these can have on our businesses and on foreign born workers who are eager to build new lives in America through the jobs our companies can offer."...

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