On the worst day of Greta Horner鈥檚 life, she was dressed in a burlap robe, waiting by the window for her husband to come home from work.
The couple was down to one car. The other one was in the shop. She donned the costume for a play, set in Old Jerusalem, part of Vacation Bible School at the church. She just needed the car to get there.
Ralph Horner, or Ed as his family calls him, should鈥檝e been pulling in the driveway any minute that morning in June 2014, home from his overnight shift as a maintenance employee at the beef plant in Greeley, Colorado. It鈥檚 owned by JBS, the world鈥檚 largest meatpacker, with its North American headquarters a short drive from the Horners鈥� rural Larimer County home.
Instead, three cars -- one from the coroner鈥檚 office, one from the sheriff鈥檚 office, one from JBS -- turned down the long, dirt driveway.
鈥淭hey seemed to be going so slowly, and I thought this isn鈥檛 good,鈥� she says.
She met the cars at the gate, still dressed in her costume, already filled with dread.
鈥淭hey introduced themselves and I just said, 鈥楧on鈥檛 tell me. I don鈥檛 even want to know. Don鈥檛 tell me. Don鈥檛 tell me.鈥� Because I just knew.鈥�
Ed died a few hours earlier. He was working alone deep in the bowels of the plant on a piece of equipment. It caught his hair and the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him in. His clothing bunched up around his neck and mouth. There, trapped under a conveyor belt, he suffocated.
, and left behind his wife, three sons and a grandchild.
The workplace for the hundreds of thousands of people who prepare beef, pork and poultry in this country is a hazardous place. than they were a decade ago, government statistics show. But the reality is, in today鈥檚 slaughterhouses, some workers pay a steep price to produce our meat, sometimes with their lives.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what Ed could鈥檝e done to be any more safe,鈥� Greta says.
The (Modern) Jungle
Today鈥檚 beef, pork, and poultry plants function though a sort of organized chaos.
Workers use a mix of hydraulic saws, industrial blenders, marinade pumps, steel hooks, metal chains, and conveyor belts to disassemble cattle, chickens and hogs, turning whole animals into cuts of meat. Line employees don smocks and chainmail to keep from cutting themselves or their coworkers. Mats line the floors to avoid slips on blood or water.
, which with its purchase of Swift Foods, is a behemoth in the beef processing industry. Originally built in 1958, the facility鈥檚 employees are able to slaughter and process upward of 5,600 head of cattle each day. It takes more than 3,000 people to keep it up and running. Daytime and evening shifts work the lines, slaughtering, slicing, bagging and boxing, while overnight maintenance and sanitation crews clean and prep the plant for the next day.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e trying to manage a small city,鈥� says Doug Schult, a JBS USA human resources executive. 鈥淲hen you take machinery and all those people, and those knives, you鈥檝e got an environment that is risky. So you鈥檝e got to accept that the risk is there. You don鈥檛 have to accept that people get hurt along with it though.鈥�
The industry has changed drastically since the 1906 publication of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair鈥檚 muckraking novel that revealed poor food safety and workplace conditions in the Chicago stockyards. But people still get hurt or get killed.
Some 151 meat and poultry workers suffered fatal injuries from 2004 to 2013, according to , which also focused on the underreporting of injuries in this industry. Compare that to who died on the job during that same period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Meat and poultry plants consistently report higher injury rates than the manufacturing industry overall, with beef and pork workers sustaining a higher rate of injuries and illnesses than poultry workers, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.
Government safety regulators recognize the risk inherent in meatpacking. The Greeley plant is under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration鈥檚 Denver office, and a subject for the team of inspectors there who check workplaces for violations of federal safety standards.
Fines Are 鈥楨mbarrassingly Low鈥�
Ed Horner鈥檚 death triggered a flurry of activity for those government regulators.
The law required the conveyor belt he was working on to be covered with a guard, meant to keep workers from suffering amputations or being pinched and pulled. If OSHA catches it on an inspection, an absent guard brings a fine. A missing machine guard remains a highly cited violation from OSHA, especially in industries where heavy equipment is used, like manufacturing, construction, and meatpacking. Both OSHA officials and industry representatives agree, they鈥檙e easy to miss.
"You're trying to manage a small city. When you take machinery and all those people, and those knives, you've got an environment that is risky."
In Horner鈥檚 case, after the incident, saying the company should鈥檝e known better. If JBS had followed well-known safety practices, his death could鈥檝e been prevented, the release said.
Even with the strong language, the final fine for the violations that led to Ed Horner鈥檚 death totaled $38,500.
鈥淵es, it鈥檚 embarrassingly low,鈥� says , a fellow with the National Employment Law Project, and a former senior OSHA official. 鈥淎nd because of that it鈥檚 unclear what kind of deterrent effect it really has.鈥�
OSHA fines are , for the first time in 25 years. In 1990 other federal agencies were given permission to raise penalty amounts tied to the rate of inflation. OSHA wasn鈥檛 given that permission, and Berkowitz says that鈥檚 left the agency unable to financially punish bad actors. Any increase to OSHA penalties must go through Congress.
The fines associated with Ed Horner鈥檚 death were lowered from an initial $45,500, after one violation was dropped during an OSHA settlement process. Lowering initial fines is a standard practice by OSHA across all industries.
"[The fine] is embarrassingly low, and because of that it's unclear what kind of deterrent effect it really has."
An investigation by Harvest Public Media found OSHA鈥檚 initial fines for safety violations in meat and poultry plants are, on average, just under $20,000 per case. But companies end up paying even less, negotiating down to about $11,000.
The Greeley plant had a history of missing or lacking machine guards. , the facility racked up serious violations for lacking machine guards, among other citations. Fines for violations found during that inspection totaled $22,000, settled down from an original fine of $32,100. Inspectors recorded machine guard violations in 2012 as well, during an inspection program designed to target high-hazard workplaces, earning the company . After contesting the violations, JBS .
., the Brazilian parent company for its North American arm, reported about $38 billion in net revenue, and earned about $650 million in profit.
OSHA decided to make the company鈥檚 problems with machine guarding even more public in 2016. As a part of the settlement related to Ed Horner鈥檚 death, OSHA placed the company on a publicly-available list of companies that have 鈥渄emonstrated indifference鈥� to federal safety standards, called the . JBS will remain on it for three years and be subject to more inspections and more OSHA oversight.
The $38,500 fine JBS paid for the violations that led to Ed Horner鈥檚 death was higher than most, says Herb Gibson, OSHA area director for its Denver office.
The agency assesses fines based on violations to the , not based on injuries or fatalities those violations actually cause, Gibson says. A worker death, and possibly a serious worker injury, will spur OSHA into action to conduct an inspection, but a worker death doesn鈥檛 necessarily influence the final fine the company pays, even if one the violations plays a role.
鈥淚n my personal opinion, the fines could be modified for fatal cases but that鈥檚 not what the law -- it doesn鈥檛 have a separate penalty for a fatality,鈥� Gibson says. 鈥淎nd that would require legislation to change that particular provision.鈥�
As for acting as a watchdog to the country鈥檚 hundreds of meat and poultry plants, large and small, OSHA officials, current and past, say they鈥檙e limited by the agency鈥檚 tight resources. About 2,000 inspectors are tasked with keeping the country鈥檚 millions of workplaces safe and illness-free.
鈥淯nfortunately, it would take OSHA a hundred years to get to every workplace, just once to inspect,鈥� Debbie Berkowitz says. 鈥淪o really a lot is up to the company.鈥�
Four Deaths In 2014
Early in 2014, JBS executives in Greeley were looking over their injury rates and feeling optimistic.
Over the last several years they鈥檇 been able to limit certain problems, measured using a rate that tells the company鈥檚 leaders how many serious injuries workers sustained and caused them to miss work. Since JBS took over the Greeley plant in 2007, the rate had been declining. It was good news.
Confident enough that existing safety programs were working, they began focusing on a second-tier, more tailored to help employees with ergonomic support to prevent repetitive injuries, another nagging problem for the industry.
Then came the summer of 2014, when JBS and its affiliated companies in North America had four worker deaths in a five-month span, stretching from the summer into early fall.
鈥淭he summer of 2014 told us that while the figures said one thing, something more systemic, more foundational broke,鈥� says , a JBS human resources executive.
Two months after Ed Horner鈥檚 death in Colorado, tragedy struck again at the Pilgrim鈥檚 Pride poultry plant in Nacogdoches, Texas, when employee Bobby Beall . JBS USA owns a controlling interest in the poultry processor with plants scattered across the southern U.S. notes he enjoyed hunting and fishing, and was known around the poultry facility for sharing candy with his coworkers.
One month later in September, a JBS employee in Alberta, Canada, Christopher Harper, succumbed to severe burns he sustained from while working at the company鈥檚 beef plant in the small town of Brooks. Being a devout hockey fan, requests donations in his memory be sent to the local junior league, the Brooks Bandits.
In October, Pablo Lopez Romero of Mount Pleasant, Texas died while working at the Pilgrim鈥檚 Pride plant there. fell on Romero鈥檚 neck and chest, killing him. says he left behind a wife of 35 years and two grandchildren.
"No fine could've created as much change and momentum towards improvement as losing a team member."
It was a string of tragic events, each one exposing hazards and safety lapses at the plants involved, and a problem that would take much longer to address than simply adding new guards to machinery or rolling out a new training regimen. JBS had a cultural problem, and executives agreed it would take more than additional OSHA visits to fix it.
鈥淣o fine could鈥檝e created as much change and momentum towards improvement as losing a team member,鈥� Gaddis says.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 need OSHA to come in and find this stuff, we need to find it ourselves,鈥� Schult adds.
Blind Spots In The Plant
Ed Horner died in a secluded maintenance room, tucked away in a portion of the plant few employees move through. He had climbed underneath a moving conveyor belt. JBS supervisors and executives simply hadn鈥檛 identified it as a hazard.
鈥淚t involved guarding of a piece of equipment that we had not, frankly, focused on in the past,鈥� Schult says.
Not only was JBS losing workers in that five month span in 2014, but safety blind spots were staying hidden until tragedy struck.
Realizing that a certain amount of complacency and comfort in their own safety protocols may have led to a situation that put a worker at risk, Chris Gaddis, the HR exec, says the company reacted, calling in a third-party risk assessment team to find additional hazards, and looked at changing internal policies to encourage reporting safety problems, rather than stifle them.
For years JBS had functioned under a 鈥渃ardinal rule鈥� policy, where a list of rules guided employees on what to do to stay safe on the job. Break a rule, and you鈥檙e fired. Zero tolerance. But it wasn鈥檛 working, Gaddis says. Instead it made the plants less safe.
Employees were understandably hesitant to come forward if they saw or participated in unsafe activities, knowing their report could get themselves, or their coworkers terminated. That led to a situation where injuries and unsafe actions were covered up and underreported.
鈥淸The cardinal rule policy] was intended to create an environment that upheld safety, but it had this unintended consequence of undermining safety,鈥� Gaddis says.
Now employees are given a strike when breaking one of the rules, and instead of being fired they鈥檙e given the ability to learn from a mistake, even act as a safety ambassador for other employees.
The company also realized that to find unseen, lurking hazards it needed to be less insular, more welcoming of new sets of eyes. The Greeley plant has often been a tour stop for Colorado business groups. In June 2015 it was opened to a sizable group of journalists. More eyes, more inspections, more points of view should mean a safer plant, Schult says.
鈥淭o me that was the biggest learning that came out of this. We鈥檙e still missing some of these things that we should we be seeing, how can we not be seeing them?鈥�
More Than A Statistic
All it took was one unseen trap for Ed Horner to lose his life. One piece of wire mesh over that spinning conveyor belt could鈥檝e saved his life.
The Horners鈥� lives were intimately connected to meatpacking. The couple met in a beef plant back in the early 1980s, both working on the floor of a small plant in Sterling, Colorado. Greta took the job because it paid better than waiting tables or clerking at a gas station. Yes, it had added dangers, but it paid the bills, and gave her a living wage, the same calculation the hundreds of thousands of meatpacking workers make today.
"Their employees aren't cattle that go through the chutes. They're people with families."
After years of working as an electrician outside the beef industry, that鈥檚 inevitably what took Ed back to the business shortly before he died.
鈥淣ot that they pay terrific, but they pay a livable salary to the employees. There aren鈥檛 all that many places like that for blue collar workers to work and get a decent salary,鈥� Greta says. 鈥淪o people go, and work there.鈥�
Ultimately what surprised her the most was just how preventable her husband鈥檚 death actually was. She hopes leaders at JBS learn a lesson.
鈥淭hey need to realize that everybody that works there is a human being with a life and it鈥檚 not just a statistic, it鈥檚 a person,鈥� she says.
鈥淭heir employees aren鈥檛 cattle that go through the chutes. They鈥檙e people with families.鈥�
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