A significant  proportion—about 26 percent—of all workers in this industry are foreign- born noncitizens, compared with only about 10 percent of all  manufacturing workers in the United States. Injury and Illness Rates Have Declined but Remain among the Highest of Any Industry

Injury and illness rates in the meat and poultry industry fell steadily from  1992 to 2001, according to BLS data (see fig. The meat and poultry  industry’s annual rate of incidence of illness and injury in 2001, at an  estimated 14.7 cases per 100 workers, was about half its 1992 rate of 29.5  cases. Many Factors Affect Injury and Illness Rates

Injury and illness rates may be affected by many factors, such as employer  or employee emphasis on safety, the amount and quality of training,  employee turnover rates, and the speed of the production line. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of  OSHA’s efforts to improve safety and health. However, because  these injuries were recorded as occurring in another industry, none of the  injuries were reflected in the meat and poultry industry’s injury and illness  rates. The data it collects  on specific worksites—recorded in multiple databases—are not easily  tracked because OSHA does not assign a unique identifier to each  worksite. Conclusions

The dangerous and repetitive nature of the work in the meat and poultry  industry results in a variety of injuries and illnesses to workers. Recommendations for Executive Action

In order to strengthen the agency’s efforts to improve safety and health of  workers at meat and poultry plants, the Secretary of Labor should direct  the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health to consider    adjusting OSHA’s criteria for selecting worksites for SST inspections and  for record-keeping audits to consider worksites that have had large  reductions in their injury and illness rates over time; requiring worksites that are surveyed by OSHA to obtain worksite-specific  data on injuries and illnesses to include (1) multiple years of data, so that  trends in their rates may be analyzed and (2) data on injuries and illnesses  to workers employed by cleaning and sanitation companies that provide  workers to the plant under contract so that these data can be included in  the rates OSHA uses to select plants for inspection;  requiring that a common identifier for each plant be used in all of its  enforcement and cooperative program databases so that these different  data sets can be more easily compared in an effort to measure the agency’s  impact on worker safety and health; and   expanding successful partnerships, such as the Omaha Area Office’s  partnership with meatpacking plants in Nebraska to other area offices  with high concentrations of meat and poultry plants. Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

For this report, we attempted to (1) describe the characteristics of  workers in meat and poultry slaughter and processing plants and the  conditions in which they work; (2) identify the types of injuries and  illnesses workers in meat and poultry slaughter and processing plants  incur, how the injury and illness rates have changed over the past decade,  and the factors that may have affected these rates; and (3) determine what  is known about the effectiveness of the Occupational Safety and Health  Administration’s (OSHA) efforts to improve safety and health at meat and  poultry slaughter and processing plants. While the majority of  time is spent cleaning the slaughter and process areas, at many plants the  crews are responsible for also cleaning bathrooms and office space.
Why GAO Did This Study

Because meatpacking is one of the most dangerous industries in the United States, we were asked to provide the Congress with information on the characteristics of workers in the meat and poultry industry and the conditions in which they work, the types of injuries and illnesses these workers incur, how injury and illness rates have changed over the past decade, and factors that may have affected these rates. We were also asked to determine what is known about the effectiveness of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) efforts to improve safety and health in the meat and poultry industries.

What GAO Found

The largest proportions of workers in the meat and poultry industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), are young, male, and/or Hispanic. Although the majority of workers are citizens, an estimated 26 percent of them are foreign-born noncitizens. They work in hazardous conditions involving loud noise, sharp tools, and dangerous machinery. Many workers must stand for long periods of time wielding knives and hooks to slaughter or process meat on a production line that moves very quickly. Workers responsible for cleaning the plant must use strong chemicals and hot pressurized water. While, according to BLS, injuries and illnesses have declined over the past decade, the meat and poultry industry still has one of the highest rates of injury and illness of any industry. The most common injuries are cuts, strains, cumulative trauma, and injuries sustained from falls, but more serious injuries, such as fractures and amputation, also occur. According to BLS, the injury and illness rate for the industry has declined from an estimated 29.5 injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers in 1992 to 14.7 in 2001. Injury and illness rates can be affected by many factors, such as the amount and quality of training, employee turnover rates, increased mechanization, and the speed of the production line. Some evidence suggests that OSHA's efforts have had a positive impact on the injury and illness rates of workers in meat and poultry plants. However, while the criteria OSHA uses to select plants for inspection--which focus on plants with relatively high injury and illness rates--are reasonable, OSHA could improve its selection process by also considering trends in plants' injury and illness rates over time. In addition, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of OSHA's efforts because the agency does not assign a unique identifier to each plant, making it hard to compare the data it collects on specific plants' injury and illness rates with the information the agency collects on the results of its plant inspections and other programs.