Meatpacking is still one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Massive disassembly lines can slaughter and process 400 head of livestock per hour, forcing workers to maintain intensely high rates of speed – in often cold conditions, with slippery floors, and electric knives. One hundred years after Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and almost a decade after Nebraska leadership took action to create the Nebraska Meatpacking Industry Workers Bill of Rights, injury rates in meatpacking are startlingly high – double that of U.S. manufacturing as a whole – and the government estimates that even these statistics undercount actual injury rates.
For this reason, this study set out to document safety conditions from the perspective of the workers who live it every day, surveying 455 workers in five communities across the state. We wanted to learn about safety improvements and practices that are worth building upon, as well as the key factors that continue to create extreme risk for the many thousands of people who are a part of bringing meat and poultry to our kitchen tables."

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