Human Rights Watch Condemns Meatpacking Industry

from The New York Times

For the first time, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that working conditions among the nation's meatpackers and slaughterhouses are so bad that they violate basic human rights.

The report, released yesterday, frequently echoes Upton Sinclair's classic on the industry, "The Jungle." It finds that jobs in many beef, pork and poultry plants are sufficiently dangerous to breach international agreements promising a safe workplace.