News

Violation of labor rights in the animal agriculture industry

2 października 2022

Investigations around the world show that the animal industry benefits from the forced labor of people in a crisis of migration, poverty or in a more difficult life situation – material, economic and social. Working conditions in animal production are the subject of research in the field of human health, zoonoses, post-traumatic stress and illegal employment, forced labor, and the results are alarming. We give examples of a few of them.

A report from the Brazilian investigative agency Repórter Brasil makes it clear that Brazilian companies and slaughterhouses, including the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, were buying meat cows on delivery farms that used slavery-like workers. It has been found that the workers and workers of the cattle farms supplying the slaughterhouses lived in improvised huts without bathrooms, toilets, running water or kitchens.

In turn, the revealed irregularities in the context of wages, working hours, and discrimination in employment of people in the agricultural sector have been indicated for years by the reports of the Gangmasters & Labor Abuse Authority, emphasizing unequivocally that many of them concern the animal agriculture sector in Great Britain.

A chance to change this dramatic situation is the implementation of restrictive regulations on the marketing of agricultural products (in particular the animal sector), to the provisions of the Sustainable Food System Law and additional monitoring and control tools for the production chain of meat, dairy products, eggs in terms of employee rights, labor use forced. We, as Green REV Institute and Future Food 4 Climate, urge us to implement these changes as soon as possible.

Photo: Unsplash