The Department of Labor and OSHA are conducting an investigation into the death of a 16-year old at a poultry processing plant. The company responsible has been cited countless times for safety violations, but they always manage to get away with paying a small fine. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Department of Labor and OSHA are conducting an investigation into the death of a 16-year-old at a poultry processing plant. The company has been cited countless times for the damnedest things where they’re just ignoring safety of these kids. First of all, how many times have you and I done this story?
Farron Cousins: Oh my God, at this point, we’re talking about dozens of times in the last year.
Mike Papantonio: How many times have you seen it on corporate networks?
Farron Cousins: No, you don’t ever hear these.
Mike Papantonio: Why? Tyson is a big advertiser. These poultry folks are big advertisers. They sell all the chicken in the country. They sell all the beef in the country. And so what happens is, you’re not gonna hear it from corporate media, but we did this story because we were talking about, I remember Tyson. You remember the Tyson story we did a few weeks ago? Tyson’s closing down plants all over the country because it was discovered that they were getting ready to hire 40,000 immigrants to step into those shoes, right? Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so now we’ve got this MarJac poultry processing plant, and they have multiple plants across the country.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, all over the place.
Farron Cousins: But the issue with them is they did the same thing, said, okay, let’s bring in the migrants. But they went a little step further. They said, we’re not just gonna bring in the migrants, we’re gonna bring in migrant teenagers.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: And we’re not gonna have any kind of safety regulations. They didn’t even have railing up where the, what is it called? The pulverizer.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, yes.
Farron Cousins: Which can, if you get stuck in that, you are dead. And that’s what happened to this 16-year-old.
Mike Papantonio: Well, it’s either that or you’ll have a system that they know fails all the time. We’ve had people losing their arms. Sucked up into the system. We’re talking about kids. Now, who they really love is the unaccompanied minors that are coming across the border. Alright. They love that because you got a 16-year-old that’s gotta figure out how to live. Right. So he’s gonna do anything. He or she’s gonna do anything to keep kicking. And so this is what they do. They go out and they understand bring in more, bring in as many as you can because if we cut off an arm or we blind them, or they’re hurt some way, we send ’em back to Guatemala. This kid Guatemalan, 16-year-old and this failure that took place that killed this kid had taken place dozens of times. They had been put on notice dozens of times that this can happen. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This wasn’t even the first time somebody died in the last two years at that particular plant, almost in the same way. So two years prior to this child dying, you had another person die. They knew the failures. OSHA looked into it and said, hey, you did some bad things. We found about 10 other violations. Give us a hundred thousand dollars and we’re done.
Mike Papantonio: Well, human life is cheap, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, in their minds, human life is cheap. Used to be, we had to go to Honduras, Nicaragua, India, China to get slave labor. But now under the headline of compassion for immigrants, that’s what really ticks me off. The American public, oh, we gotta do this. This is compassionate America. This doesn’t have anything to do with compassion. It has to do with US Chamber of Commerce, associated industry, and every major corporation in the world, bringing these folks in so we can move folks out that we’re paying minimum wages to and have these people work for slave wages. That’s what’s going on here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, 100%. And like you said, these are people who routinely get hurt. They’re not told how to operate these things properly. And they know that, the CEOs, the corporations know that if this person does get injured, they can’t do anything because they risk exposing themselves as an undocumented immigrant. Or they know they’re gonna get shipped back. They could lose their asylum status if they can’t hold a job. So these people will lose fingers, they will lose their vision, they will lose other parts of their body and keep on going. And that’s what corporate America wants. Work until there’s nothing of you left and then we’ll just grab the next person and replace you.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, you and I have done this story, you’ve done this story. Sometimes I’ll watch your story, I’ll go, God, that’s brilliant. It is a great attack, Farron, thank you for doing the attack. And then I’ll say, well, surely somebody’s gonna pick it up. Surely, because I know what happens. Corporate media looks through this stuff. I can promise you. Little producers are always looking for new material. So those producers are looking for new material. Oh, we can’t tell that story. Even though Farron laid it out item by item. Farron made it very clear what was happening. We’re still not gonna do the story. That’s how this all works. And so when we start raising hell about it, you know, like I say, if you believe this about we’re the compassionate types bringing in all these folks, this is all about business. It’s about bottom line. Has very little to do with compassion.
Farron Cousins: Ring of Fire founder and host of America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio has a new book came out this week called, “Suspicious Activity.” Like his other books before it, this book actually deals with real legal cases that Mike Papantonio has handled, but in a fictionalized way. The book follows the character of Nick Deketomis that Papantonio first introduced in his book, “Law and Disorder,” and it carries on the story that began in “Law and Disorder” through “Law and Vengeance,” “Law and Addiction,” “Inhuman Trafficking,” and now “Suspicious Activity.” This book, in particular, deals with the financial institutions that have helped launder money for terrorist organizations, which of course is a topic we have covered extensively here on Ring of Fire. So if you’re a follower of Mike Papantonio’s books, or if this is your first one, you can get your copy of “Suspicious Activity” now. Just go to MikePapantonio.com and place your order. And if you haven’t already, check out Mike’s other books, also available on MikePapantonio.com.
