JBS is the world’s largest meat producer, with net revenue last year of $76 billion, and, unsurprisingly, it has historically relied on immigrant labor. The company has recently been accused by its workers’ union of deceptively luring Haitian refugees to work at its Greeley, Colorado, facility, a practice described by the union as human trafficking.
The hundreds of Haitian refugees at the plant who entered the country under the temporary protective status program hold wildly dangerous jobs slaughtering thousands of cows a day. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump is preparing to deport millions of immigrants, including the Haitian refugees, which make up one of the largest groups of employees at the Greeley JBS plant. The question now is whether the meat industry can continue operating if so much of its workforce must leave the country.
For today’s episode, Mark and I talked to Ted Genoways, a senior editor the Food & Environment Reporting Network, who’s been covering the meatpacking industry for more than a decade and recently reported—brilliantly, I might add—the Greeley story on the investigative radio show Reveal.
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