Cargill needs months to fully cut out US firm fined for child labor

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Cargill Inc will need months to fully sever ties with a U.S. company fined for hiring kids to do dangerous work cleaning meat plants, the head of the meatpacker’s North American protein business said on Tuesday.

The timeline shows the challenges of quickly finding and implementing replacements for Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI), which provides cleaning services at slaughterhouses.

“We made the decision to terminate the agreements with PSSI,” Hans Kabat, who leads Cargill’s protein business in North America, told Reuters. “It’s really important to understand that that will take time.”

Cargill said it first notified PSSI in March that it was terminating services at a beef plant in Dodge City, Kansas, and then followed with all PSSI’s sanitation contracts. PSSI’s work will end in Dodge City in mid-May.

PSSI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rival meatpacker JBS USA on Monday said it was ending contracts with PSSI and also bringing sanitation work in-house at some facilities.

The U.S. Department of Labor in February said PSSI paid $1.5 million in penalties for employing more than 100 teenagers in jobs at meatpacking plants in eight states. One of the largest penalties stemmed from PSSI’s contracts at Cargill’s plant in Dodge City.

“It will be a while to get the remaining facilities out,” Kabat said.

“These are challenging issues and we want to make sure that we understand fully how to manage that – getting the plants cleaned, keeping people safe and still making sure that requirements around employment and age verification are all 100%.”

Cargill, the world’s largest producer of ground beef, is reviewing options for having plants cleaned, Kabat said.

The Labor Department did not accuse meatpackers of wrongdoing, though the Biden administration has urged meat companies to examine supply chains for evidence of child labor.

A February 2022 Reuters story exposed child labor at Alabama chicken plants. Reuters reporting last year also found migrant children, some as young as 12, were manufacturing car parts at suppliers to Korean auto giants Hyundai and Kia.