A report published jointly by the International Labor Organization and Unicef, organizations that observed June 12 as World Day Against Child Labor, found agriculture is the largest employer of child labor. According to the latest available data, more than 75 percent of all 5 to 14 year olds in child labor worldwide were employed in agriculture in 2020. In recent months in the United States, the standout users of child labor have been the meat and poultry sectors, often through contracts for cleaning services.
With frequent actions to enforce child labor laws citing the meat and poultry sectors, it was not long before the industry-leading Meat Institute, formerly the “North American Meat Institute,” decided to do something about it. The Washington, D.C.
-based trade organization distributed specific instructions to keep its members out of trouble. With hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the country illegally each month, including more unaccompanied minors than ever before, the Meat Institute says child labor is hired both knowingly and unknowingly in the United States, including by many meat and poultry businesses. Those often are food safety jobs cleaning dangerous equipment.
The Meat Institute’s “best practices” were developed to help prevent child labor, given the record influx of undocumented minors occurring in tandem with the increasing prevalence and sophistication of identity theft and fraud. In each and every one of those meat and poultry facilities,.
