The U.S. meat and poultry industry employs more than 500,000 workers and keeping those workers safe is one of the top industry priorities. For the last 25 years, worker safety has been a non-competitive issue, meaning companies openly share best practices to help improve safety for all. During this period, the meat industry partnered with the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to create the first industry specific voluntary ergonomic guidelines, and numerous other new safety steps and programs have been implemented as standard practices. Data show these have worked, with the industry reporting all-time lows for worker injury and illness rates in the most statistics released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Still, many questions persist about worker safety, so the Meat Institute developed a new Glass Walls video to take viewers inside plants to see many of these steps in action. The video features Tom Young, Smithfield Foods’ senior director of corporate safety and chairman of the Meat Institute Worker Safety Committee, discussing the various procedures and equipment companies use to keep workers safe.
“Our employees are the backbone of the meat and poultry industry and the reason why we’re able to bring delicious and nutritious products to consumers’ plates every day,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Barry Carpenter. “We’re proud of our worker safety progress and want to show the variety of ways companies keep people safe.”
The video highlights worker safety steps to reduce the likelihood of injuries from accidents as well as longer term cumulative trauma from repetitive motions. It shows the equipment and procedures in place and details what happens on the occasions when injuries occur.
The worker safety video is the 12th in the Glass Walls video series. Other videos include tours of beef, pork, lamb and turkey plants featuring animal welfare expert Temple Grandin, PhD. Videos also cover how ground beef, bacon and hot dogs are made as well as how plants are cleaned daily and food safety interventions. To date the videos have been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube alone.
All of the videos are available on the Meat News Network YouTube page and can also be accessed on the Meat Institute Facebook page.
