Smithfield’s $2 million child labor penalty dwarfed by parent company’s annual $26 billion in sales

Powerful cutting blades in a meat processing plant. Photo by Getty Images.

Meat processing giant Smithfield will pay a $2 million penalty to resolve a child labor compliance order with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, the largest child labor enforcement action in DLI history.

The fine will have almost no impact on the company’s bottom line, however, given annual revenue of parent company WH Group Limited tops $26 billion. 

A consent order with the company will also require the Chinese-owned Smithfield to conduct industry outreach related to child labor compliance; require child labor compliance with its labor staffing agencies and sanitation contractors; and take other steps to ensure future child labor compliance, according to a DLI press release.

A DLI investigation found that between 2021 and 2023, the St. James area plant owned by Smithfield employed at least 11 minor children between the ages of 14 and 17. The children were also working late on school nights and performing hazardous jobs like working near chemicals; operating power-driven machinery, including meat grinders, slicers and power-driven conveyor belts; and operating nonautomatic elevators, lifts or hoisting machines, including motorized pallet jacks and lift pallet jacks.

“It is unacceptable for a company to employ minor children to perform hazardous work late at night. This illegal behavior impacts children’s health, safety and well-being and their ability to focus on their education and their future,” said DLI Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach. “Combatting unlawful child labor in Minnesota is a priority for DLI and it will continue to devote resources to addressing and resolving these violations.”

In fall 2023, DLI entered into a consent order with Tony Downs Food Company in Madelia in another child labor law case. 

Also in 2023, Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services paid civil penalties to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division for employing minor children in hazardous occupations at meat processing facilities in eight states, including Minnesota.

In a statement, Smithfield offered an at-times combative response, denying “that we knowingly hired anyone under the age of 18 to work in our St. James facility. We have not admitted liability as part of this settlement; however, in the interest of preventing the distraction of prolonged litigation, we have agreed to settle this matter.”

The company said it uses E-Verify, a federal system that validates employment eligibility based on federal records.  

“Each of the 11 alleged underage individuals passed the E-Verify system by using false identification. Each used a different name to obtain employment with Smithfield than the name by which DLI identified them to Smithfield,” the company said in the statement. 

Smithfield emphasized that the company is opposed to child labor and has “taken proactive steps to enforce our policy prohibiting the employment of minors.” 

The child labor issue has come into focus in recent years, spurred in part by a series of investigative articles in the New York Times that exposed the exploitation of migrant children especially. 

“This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota,” the article states.

And child meat processing workers in Minnesota.