USDA Line Speed Plan Tests Guardrails of Worker Safety Agency

The USDA’s push to accelerate line speeds at meat processing facilities will put more pressure on OSHA, as safety advocates warn faster processing can worsen already high injury rates among workers.

The Department of Agriculture recently proposed to make permanent higher speeds that it allows at some meat processing facilities under waivers to help lower the price of chicken and pork products. Meat and poultry workers deal with dangerous equipment, slippery floors, and biological hazards every day, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which has noted workers experience carpal tunnel syndrome more than seven times the national average.

The USDA’s latest attempt to increase the pace of the nation’s poultry and pork lines reopens a long-standing conflict between worker safety and industry output, pitting the goals of two different federal agencies against one another. That dynamic is also likely to play out in the courts as unions are expected to sue the government claiming the USDA didn’t properly consider worker safety before issuing the proposal.

OSHA has identified fast-paced repetitive work in poultry plants as a major ergonomic hazard, but the work safety agency can’t regulate the speed of meat processing lines. The agency instead has cited employers under standards such as machine guarding or the general duty clause for creating unsafe conditions.

This leaves employers stuck balancing productivity, food safety, and worker safety under overlapping regulators.

“I know that pricing is really a big concern, but they also need to be mindful of the legal ramifications as well,” said Margo Wolf O’Donnell, an employment attorney at Benesch Law who represents larger companies in litigation of statutory and whistleblower claims.

The meat processing industry, particularly groups like the National Chicken Council and the National Pork Producers Council, welcomed the proposed changes, citing the need for efficiency and competitiveness.

The USDA said in a statement that the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s proposal preserves all necessary food safety verification and inspection activities, noting that OSHA’s statutory authority is to promote workplace safety and health. USDA inspectors will retain the authority to slow or stop lines if food safety or process control isn’t maintained, the agency said.

OSHA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Jurisdictional Overlap

Under the USDA’s proposal, poultry plants would be able to increase line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175, while pork plants could determine their own line speeds based on their ability to maintain control of the process.

Unions and workers are warning those changes will lead to more injuries on the job.

The Trump administration is exploiting a regulatory gap that allowed the USDA to permit faster line speeds without taking worker safety into account, said Michael Duff, a professor of Law at Saint Louis University School of Law. OSHA doesn’t have authority over the speeds and can only enforce rules around worker safety.

“OSHA should be protecting meatpacking employee safety directly, but its statutory architecture is simply too sparse,” said Duff.

OSHA is also limited in how it can tackle ergonomics. The agency’s previous attempt at implementing a federal ergonomics standard in 2000 was repealed via congressional review. Since then, OSHA has attempted to address ergonomics through guidelines and issuing citations under the general duty clause.

“These sort of safety issues are still top of mind and have evolved since the pandemic and I think these are the type of issues that we’re really never going to see go away,” said O’Donnell, referring to the conflicts between the USDA and OSHA during the Covid-19 pandemic where the USDA prioritized plant production by pushing to keep slaughterhouses open while OSHA faced criticism for failing to enforce worker protections.

Litigation Front

Litigation has served as a key check on regulatory action where conflicting priorities between the two agencies are at odds and stakeholders are caught in between.

Worker advocates and unions sued when USDA rolled out a rule in 2018 that would have allowed pork plants to run faster processing lines, arguing the agency ignored evidence that the faster line speeds caused injuries.

Ultimately, a federal judge in 2021 struck down the rule after determining the agency didn’t adequately consider worker safety concerns raised by the unions.

The Trump administration is using a USDA-funded worker safety study completed under the Biden administration for its new proposal to permanently allow faster meatpacking line speeds.

The PULSE study found that adequate staffing levels can mitigate the risk of injury when line speeds are increased.

The administration’s use of that study is misguided because the facilities cited were fully staffed—which isn’t a reality at most plants, according to food safety advocates with the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law.

“The operational reality of what the PULSE study was trying to control for or look at just wasn’t the reality of day-to-day life at a high speed plant,” said Amanda Hitt, who has 17 years of working with food and agriculture whistleblowers and also interviewed two former USDA line inspectors that raised concerns about the proposal.

Despite the regulation still being in the rulemaking stage, labor unions are already signaling that they’re prepared to sue if it’s finalized.

“Meatpacking workers have fought for decades to bring our food supply chain to where it is today, and we will fight to ensure their safety on the job,” said Mark Lauritsen, UFCW International’s vice president and director of food processing, packing and manufacturing division.