Portside

One of Chick-fil-A’s major poultry providers was recently fined for repeated child labor law violations, with children as young as 13 working at an Alabama-based facility.

Chick-fil-A, the nation’s largest chicken sandwich quick service restaurant with 3,000 locations worldwide, buys chicken from Mar-Jac Poultry, according to legal filings.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor fined Mar-Jac Poultry $385,000 after a child labor investigation found that the poultry processing company routinely hired children as young as 13 years old at its facility in Jasper, Alabama. 

The investigation also found that 14 and 15-year-olds performed hazardous tasks such as eviscerating poultry, operating forklifts and working on the plant’s kill floor, according to the DOL. These children were also working overnight shifts between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., outside legally allowed hours.

“Mar-Jac Poultry has repeatedly been found to put young workers at risk, resulting in the tragic death of a child at their Mississippi facility in 2023,” Wage and Hour Division Regional Administrator Juan Coria said in a DOL statement.

Investigate Midwest repeatedly reached out to Chick-fil-A for comment on the DOL’s investigation and its current relationship with Mar-Jac Poultry, but the company has not responded. 

Mar-Jac Poultry, a privately-held company based in Gainesville, Georgia, owns slaughter plants in Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama. The company said in a statement that it has complied with the DOL, but claims it did not knowingly hire underage employees.

“Mar-Jac only accepts job applications from individuals who are over 18, and is happy to agree with the U.S. Department of Labor to continue to do so. Our policy against hiring minors ensures that persons under 18 are not exposed to the risks inherent in certain hazardous occupations,” said Joel Williams, senior vice president of operations, in a statement. “With the resolution of this lawsuit Mar-Jac can focus on providing good jobs to adult workers and wholesome products to consumers.”

The company declined to answer questions about how the settlement has impacted its customers and whether Chick-fil-A remained an active buyer.

A history of harm

The settlement between DOL and Mar-Jac Poultry comes after years of worker injuries and deaths at Mar-Jac facilities, including the death of 16-year-old Duvan Tomas Perez. 

Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant who was too young to be legally working at Mar-Jac Poultry’s Mississippi meatpacking facility, died while sanitizing a vertical conveyor belt when he was pulled into the machine’s moving gears and killed on July 14, 2023.

Two years prior, Bobby Butler, 48, died at the same Mar-Jac Poultry processing plant after his arm was pulled into a moving machine made for eviscerating chickens.

This year, Investigate Midwest published an investigation into how Mar-Jac Poultry and other companies have benefited from delays and a growing backlog of cases held by the commission that reviews responsible for reviewing company challenges to Department of Labor violations.

Mar-Jac Poultry’s various facilities have paid nearly $1 million in workplace safety and wage violations since 2009, according to DOL filings, including its recent child labor violation fines. 

The number of child labor law violations has increased by 35% in the last decade, with monetary fines tripling in the same time. 

As investigations have risen, some federal lawmakers have called for increased probes into the meatpacking industry for child labor. However, the agencies that investigate these claims have been hit by recent federal workforce reductions, which could impede those actions.