A second company involved in meat processing has agreed to reform its hiring practices after investigators recently discovered teenagers working there.
The Labor Department said Friday that Monogram Foods will pay a more than $30,000 fine as part of an agreement reached after a 16-year-old and 17-year-old were found to be working at the Memphis, Tennessee-based company’s Chandler, Minnesota, plant. Officials also ordered the company not to ship any products produced while the teens were employed at the plant that makes a variety of meat snacks, but normal operations resumed once they were fired.
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Earlier this year, a separate investigation found more than 100 kids working overnight for a company that cleans slaughterhouses, handling dangerous equipment like skull splitters and razor-sharp bone saws. Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, agreed earlier this year to pay a $1.5 million fine and update its hiring practices after investigators confirmed at least 102 kids were working for the company at 13 meat processing plants nationwide.
“Our company does not want, and has a zero-tolerance policy for, ineligible underage labor and we have fully cooperated with this process,” Monogram Foods said. “We take our legal obligations and our longstanding commitment to compliance very seriously, and immediately terminated the two ineligible workers.”
The company that employs about 4,000 people nationwide produces a variety of private label meat snacks, appetizers, sandwiches, corn dogs and other convenience products. It is owned by private equity firm Pritzker Private Capital.