Vol. 72/No. 8      February 25, 2008

Twelve of the sick packers worked at Quality Pork Processors (QPP) in Austin, Minnesota; one at the Hormel plant in Austin; and two at Indiana Packers in Delphi, Indiana. The Austin Hormel plant adjoins QPP, and the affected Hormel worker worked in the rendering room directly below the QPP head table. Other workers in the Hormel rendering room are now being examined for symptoms.

The head table workers at QPP cut meat from the pig heads at a rate of 1,100 pigs an hour. They sliced off the cheek and snout meat, then inserted a nozzle into the head and used compressed air to remove the brain tissue.

State and federal health officials say that the air compression system sprays droplets of pig brain into the air. The workers could have inhaled small particles of brain matter, sparking an immune system reaction causing the body to attack its own nerve tissue. The affected workers show inflammation in the nerve roots in the lower half of their spinal cords. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has named the condition “progressive inflammatory neuropathy.”

According to the CDC, the three plants in the United States that used the air compression system to extract pig brains have all stopped using the procedure.

Although two workers at Indiana Packers have been diagnosed with the neurological disease, the Indiana Department of Health refused to identify the name or location of the facility, or to discuss the condition of the workers, citing privacy concerns.

Joe Chorpenning, president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 700, which organizes workers in the plant, released a statement January 18. “One can assume that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and his state government doesn’t care about regular working people,” the statement said, based on the government’s effort to “hide information that might protect workers from neurological illness.”

Susan Kruse, who used to work at QPP, fell ill in November 2006. She went to her own doctor assuming the illness was not work-related. She, like others, had symptoms of fatigue, numbness, and tingling in the arms and legs. When Kruse’s doctor told her she could no longer work, she was forced to go on disability. She still has “heard nothing from the company,” she told the Militant.

Minnesota health officials have announced an expanding investigation of the QPP plant, to include thousands of former meat packers going back a decade to when the air compressor system was first installed.

Health officials have maintained that food processed in the plant remains safe to eat.

Meanwhile, at the JBS-Swift packing plant in Greeley, Colorado, Richard Rogers fell 20 feet February 1 while working alone in a storage room. He died after being unconscious for almost five days.

Rogers had worked at the plant for 16 years. His wife Hope told the Greeley Tribune that she is angry “because he was by himself when he fell, and he might have been conscious for a while.

“I didn’t find out about the fall until four hours later, when the hospital called me at home,” she added.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating.
 
 
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Sugar refinery explosion kills 6 workers in Georgia
Sweden: iron miner working 2,300 feet below ground killed
No worker has to die on the job!  
 
 
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