An Alabama poultry company is in hot water with the DOL over child labor allegations.
“Investigators allegedly again found minors working on the kill floor of a poultry plant owned by the company that was found responsible for the death of a teenager last year, according to court filings.
Department of Labor investigators said they discovered on May 1 ‘oppressive child labor’ at the poultry plant in Alabama, ‘namely children working on the kill floor deboning poultry and cutting carcasses,’ after obtaining a civil search warrant.
‘The children had been working at the facility for months,’ the filing said.
According to court documents, the company, Mar-Jac Poultry, denied knowing it had any employees who were under 18 years.
In a statement to ABC News, Mar-Jac said the minors were hired with documents ‘that showed they were over 18 years of age.’
The Department of Labor is seeking a court order to stop the company from selling and shipping “poultry tainted by oppressive child labor” from the company’s plant in Alabama, according to court filings.
Federal regulators had earlier this year called the July 2023 death of Duvan Perez, a 16-year-old who died while cleaning a poultry processing machine at a Mar-Jac facility, ‘a preventable, dangerous situation’ that no worker should have been in, ‘let alone a child.'”
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