Fayette Janitorial LLC employed 15 children to clean dangerous equipment at a Perdue Farms plant in Virginia and nine to clean a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork plant in Iowa.
I worked at a small meat processing facility when I was young, on the cleanup crew as well. I don't say that to advocate for children doing these jobs, it was miserable, and dangerous, and incredibly disgusting. At the end of the day every piece of equipment had to be completely disassembled and each part cleaned. A lot of the meat is cut with a band saw, when the blade cuts the meat it turns some of it into a fine paste, think meat sawdust. That meat sawdust goes everywhere inside the machinery. To clean it you have to take the blade out of the machine which is like trying to fold 100 foot razor sharp knife onto itself, it's very easy to get seriously injured if you aren't careful.
Animals are killed in a way that's efficient and profitable, not in a way that minimizes suffering. You should sit down and watch Earthlings sometime. Meat is the largest industry in the world, but most people intentionally ignore how it operates.
Well somebody has to do it. And since they aren't down in the coal mines anymore at least it's a surface job... Darn soft kids of the iPad generation, nobody wants to work anymore...
Most of these children are migrants who were likely sent across the border by themselves and live with distant relatives and/or shady people who want them to pay for their room and board.