Working conditions in the U.S. meat and poultry industry are so hazardous and the tactics that employers use to prevent workers from organizing so threatening that the industry consistently violates basic human rights. That is the conclusion of a Cornell University labor law expert in a report for Human Rights Watch.

"In sum, the United States is failing to meet its obligations under international human rights standards to protect the human rights of meat and poultry industry workers," writes Lance Compa, who teaches courses in U.S. labor law and international labor rights at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, in the report.

"Workers in American beef, pork and poultry slaughtering and processing plants, many of whom are immigrants, perform dangerous, physically demanding and exhausting jobs in bloody, greasy surroundings. The workers not only contend with abuses and an unprecedented volume and pace in sawing and cutting carcasses, but they also experience constant fear and risk, not only for their health and safety but for their jobs if they get hurt or attempt to organize," writes Compa.

He is the lead researcher and author of the 175-page report, "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," the first human rights analysis of a single industry. The full report is available from the Web site of Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/usa0105/ ), an independent, nongovernmental organization, supported by private contributions and foundations.

Compa points out that employers illegally interfere with workers' attempts to bargain collectively in their efforts to improve working conditions. "Many workers who try to form trade unions and bargain collectively are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired, deported or otherwise victimized for their exercise of the right to freedom of association," writes Compa.

He notes that since many of the workers are undocumented immigrants, employers intimidate them by threatening to call immigration authorities. Furthermore, he writes, many injured workers, who not uncommonly lose a limb or suffer severe life-threatening injuries, don't get workers' compensation when injured, and government laws, regulations and policies and enforcement fail to protect them.

Compa and his colleagues studied conditions in beef packing in Nebraska, hog slaughtering in North Carolina and poultry processing in Arkansas, specifically looking at Nebraska Beef Ltd., Smithfield Foods Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc., respectively. What he found at the three sites, he said, is not atypical of the industry at large.

The researchers also interviewed dozens of employees, community organizers, workers' compensation attorneys, ergonomics experts and government officials in detail, and incorporated the findings of numerous other studies, legal pleadings, rulings and transcripts of injury reports, workers' compensation records and company memoranda into the report.

The report calls for large-scale changes to health and safety and workers' compensation regulations and practices and greater protection of workers' rights to organize, with new policies to protect immigrant workers, regardless of their legal status.

"Meatpacking work has extraordinarily and unnecessarily high rates of injury, musculoskeletal disorders (repetitive stress injuries) and even death. The inherent dangers of meatpacking work are aggravated by ever-increasing line speeds, inadequate training, close-quarters cutting and long hours with few breaks," Compa writes. "To reduce the extensive and systematic violations of the basic human rights standards in the industry, we need new federal and state laws to reduce line speed, establish new ergonomics standards, devise stricter injury reporting, reduce underreporting of injuries and honor workers' rights to organize."

The report offers detailed recommendations, many excerpts from the interviews conducted, and an extensive list of appendices.