Labor Department finds 2 dozen children working in slaughterhouses

The Labor Department is accusing a Tennessee-based janitorial company of hiring children as young as 13 to clean dangerous equipment in slaughterhouses.

According to a Wednesday filing in federal court, the department found that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC employed at least 24 child workers to scrub the gear in Virginia and Iowa.

Of the children, 15 went to a Perdue poultry facility in Virginia while nine were sent to a pork-processing plant run by Seaboard Triumph Foods in Iowa. While at the slaughterhouses, the kids cleaned hazardous tools like head splitters and meat saws.

It’s federally illegal for children to work in slaughterhouses due to the risk.

Perdue Farms said it terminated its contract with Fayette before Wednesday’s filing, condemned the use of child labor and said it has policies in place that restrict the hiring of underage workers.

Fayette has been under the Labor Department’s microscope for over a year. In July 2022, the company was cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for failing to ensure its employees followed proper procedure after one of its workers was sucked into a conveyor belt at a Gerber Poultry plant. The Labor Department found more than two dozen child laborers working for Gerber last October.

Labor Department investigators have been cracking down on companies that provide janitorial services to slaughterhouses. Last year, the department cited Packers Sanitation Services Inc. for employing over 100 children in 13 locations across the U.S. The company was fined $1.5 million.