According to federal authorities, children worked illegally on dangerous night shifts at a pork processing plant

Federal investigators found that nearly a dozen children worked dangerous night shifts at the Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, Iowa, the Labor Department announced.

Employed by Guymon, Oklahoma-based plumbing company Qvest, 11 children allegedly used caustic cleaning products to disinfect head splitters, jaw pullers, band saws, neck scissors and other equipment at the Seaboard Triumph Foods facility from at least September 2019 to September 2023, the DOL said in a press release on Friday.

Due to the increased risk of injury, federal law prohibits minors from working in meat processing.

Seaboard Foods is one of the largest pork producers in the country. In addition to Iowa, Seaboard Foods, a division of Seaboard Corporation, has locations in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah, as well as Mexico, according to the company’s website.

“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of illegally working children at its Sioux City facility since at least September 2019. “Despite the change in sanitation contractors, children at this facility continued to work in hazardous occupations,” said Michael Lazzeri, the Midwest regional administrator for DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, the release said.

Qvest must pay $171,919 in civil penalties for child labor and take measures to prevent minors from being illegally hired again.

Qvest and Seaboard did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, the illegal employment of children under 18 in hazardous jobs at meat and poultry slaughtering and processing plants is not unique to the industry or to the Seaboard Foods plant in Sioux Falls.

Seaboard hired Fayette Janitorial Services to perform plumbing work at its facility in September 2023. Earlier this year, after taking over the plant’s plumbing services contract, Fayette allegedly rehired some of the children previously employed by the Somerville, Tennessee-based contractor Qvest found fit for work nine minors at the Sioux Falls plant, the DOL alleged.

Fayette also allegedly employed 15 children as young as 13 at a Perdue Farms processing plant in Accomac, Virginia, where a 14-year-old was seriously injured. Perdue terminated its contract with Fayette before the DOL filed the lawsuit in court, the company said.

Do migrant children clean US slaughterhouses?

The development is part of an ongoing investigation into whether migrant children are cleaning U.S. slaughterhouses. It’s also less than a year after the government fined another plumbing service provider $1.5 million for employing more than 100 children – aged 13 to 17 years – at 13 meat processing plants in eight states.

The DOL launched its investigation after a published report detailed how migrant children worked overnight for contractors at poultry processing plants on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. A New York Times Magazine article last December described how children used acid and pressure hoses to clean blood, grease and feathers from equipment.

The Times report included details about a 14-year-old boy who was mutilated while cleaning a conveyor belt in a cutting area at a Perdue slaughterhouse in rural Virginia. The eighth-grader was among thousands of Mexican and Central American children who crossed the border on their own to work in dangerous jobs.

But it’s not just migrant children who are tasked with illegal and dangerous work. A 16-year-old high school student, Michael Schuls, died last summer after… trapped in a machine at a Wisconsin sawmill.

From an elevated waterslide at a beach park in Jacksonville, Florida, to a sawmill in Clarkrange, Tennessee, federal investigators across the country are finding children working illegal hours and performing risky, unlawful tasks. In May, federal investigators found a 13-year-old girl who was allegedly working up to 60 hours a week an assembly line in Luverne, Alabama.

Recently, the DOL found that a Grand Rapids, Michigan, window cleaning company illegally hired three children to clean residential windows and gutters and install Christmas lights. One of them required surgery after sustaining serious injuries after falling from a roof. Another DOL case resolved last month involved children operating and cleaning a meat grinder and driving motor vehicles to deliver orders for a pizza restaurant in Iron River, Wisconsin.

The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division oversaw 736 investigations in fiscal year 2024 that uncovered child labor violations, affecting 4,030 children, the agency said.

In addition to the federal government, the state of Massachusetts has also recently targeted companies that violate child labor laws, citing an operator of dozens of Burger King franchise locations across the state for allegedly giving minors more work hours than allowed by law. Separately, Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has reached a settlement with a New Jersey-based owner of Popeyes franchises across Massachusetts to resolve similar allegations, her office said last week.