Slaughterhouse Abuses Children As Well As Animals
Many vegans compare animal rights to other liberation movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, The Labor Movement, and more. Whether or not you find these comparisons offensive, you have to admit there are intersections of abuse and immorality. An example:
“The investigation [of an Iowa slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors] brings to light egregious violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa’s child labor laws.” [...]
“In interviews, [the child workers] said they were forced to work long hours on night shifts, sometimes up to 17 hours a day, and were not paid all of their overtime. They said they were put to work on racing production lines using knives to cut meat and poultry with little or no safety training.”
For more on this subject, check out vegan.com and the NY Times.
I’m currently on a re-read of The Jungle….. Although the story is a hundred years old, I’m saddened that the same exploitations and injustices to immigrant workers (and children) still exist today -
“Very often a man could get no work in Packingtown for months, while a child could go and get a place easily; there was always some new machine, by thich the packers could get as much work of of a child as they had been able to get out of a man, and for a third of the pay”. -Upton Sinclair
Fast Food Nation points out many of the labor abuses involved in slaughterhouses as well. Fast Food Nation is definitely worth a read.