- A Mississippi poultry plant is facing more than $200,000 in fines after a teen worker was killed.
- The 16-year-old contract worker was pulled into a chicken deboning machine while cleaning it last year.
A Mississippi poultry processing plant is facing more than $200,000 in fines from the US Department of Labor after a 16-year-old contract employee was killed after being pulled into a chicken deboning machine.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration released a statement this week blaming Mar-Jac Poultry's ineffective safety policies for the teen's death. Following an investigation into the incident, OSHA cited the processing plant for 17 violations and proposed $212,646 in fines.
Mar-Jac Poultry, the Georgia-based poultry processor, has plants across the US South. A representative for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
While the government did not name the victim, the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity, a nonprofit supporting migrants, previously identified the teenager as Duvan Tomas Pérez, according to The New York Times.
Pérez immigrated to the US from Guatemala about six or seven years ago, the organization said. He was employed at the Mississippi plant via a contract staffing agency, according to a Department of Labor report.
On July 14, 2023, Pérez was sanitizing a chicken deboning machine when he became caught in a rotating shaft and pulled into the machine, according to the OSHA report.
Minors are not supposed to clean meat-processing machines like the one that killed the teenager because the Labor Department has deemed them too dangerous, according to The Times.
The government's probe into the incident said the plant failed to employ a device that would keep the machine from turning on during cleaning.
The teenager was the second worker killed at the Hattiesburg facility in a little over two years. The Department of Labor first cited the Mississippi plant for unsafe working conditions in 2021 after an adult employee died when his shirt became caught in a machine.
In May 2021, an employee was removing chicken parts from the carousel of a different machine when his left sleeve became caught, pulling him into the eviscerator and pinning his body under the heavy machinery, according to OSHA.
"Following the fatal incident in May 2021 Mar-Jac Poultry should have enforced strict safety standards in its facility," OSHA Regional Administrator Kurt Petermeyer said in a Tuesday statement.
"Only about two years later nothing has changed and the company continues to treat employee safety as an afterthought, putting its workers at risk," he added. "No worker should be placed in a preventable, dangerous situation, let alone a child."
Mar-Jac Poultry has 15 days to comply with the proposed fines or contest the findings.