Poultry Firm Hit With $212,646 Fine After Machine Kills Teen Worker

The US Department of Labor is proposing a $212,646 fine against a Mississippi poultry processor after a 16-year-old sanitation worker was pulled into a chicken deboning machine and killed.

OSHA cited Mar-Jac Poultry with 14 "serious" and three "other-than-serious" violations in response to the latest death. I Photo: Mar-Jac Poultry Facebook

This tragic incident marks the second worker fatality in just over two years at the plant, as reported by Parija Kavilanz for CNN.

The same facility had previously been cited by the Department of Labor for unsafe working conditions when an adult worker lost his life in 2021 after his shirt sleeve got caught in a different machine.

In the recent incident, the teen contract worker, employed by Georgia-based Onin Staffing, was sanitizing the machine at the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Mar-Jac Poultry plant on July 14, 2023.

The worker was caught in the rotating shaft and sprockets, leading to a fatal outcome, according to a report from the DOL’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

OSHA regional administrator Kurt Petermeyer in Atlanta stated, “Following the fatal incident in May 2021, Mar-Jac Poultry should have enforced strict safety standards in its facility. Only about two years later, nothing has changed, and the company continues to treat employee safety as an afterthought, putting its workers at risk. No worker should be placed in a preventable, dangerous situation, let alone a child.”

OSHA cited Mar-Jac Poultry with 14 "serious" and three "other-than-serious" violations in response to the latest death.

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