U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stated poultry processors whose line pace waivers are set to run out on the finish of March can count on to get an extension.

Vilsack addressed the problem when questioned by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, at a February 28 Senate Agriculture Committee assembly.

Tuberville stated that after studying that extensions have been granted earlier within the week regarding pork plant line speeds, he was questioning if the scenario can be the identical for poultry processors.

“We’ll see an extension of this as a result of we need to make certain we get the suitable details about whether or not or not line speeds truly do relate to elevated employee damage or employee security,” Vilsack stated.

A 3rd-party research, which was mentioned throughout a current Home Agriculture Committee assembly, is presently being performed to evaluate these questions regarding security.

“That’s the entire function of that is to attempt to discover out what the information are,” Vilsack instructed the committee. “We have to construction these research in a manner that provides us the knowledge and I’m not thinking about making choices on this till I’ve all of the information. I don’t have all of the information but.”

Whereas Tuberville and his colleagues didn’t query the research itself, in the course of the Home listening to, Rep. David Rouzer, R-North Carolina, questioned whether or not the research was crucial and expressed issues that the folks conducting the research have a bias in opposition to poultry processors.

“No member of the research workforce is from a land grant establishment with information of the hen trade, however as a substitute are associates of the College of California system. Now, a member of that research workforce testified in entrance of OSHA in opposition to an organization taking part within the research, and has vocally critiqued numerous different crops. Contemplating the work of different workforce members and the knowledge requested earlier than every plant go to that far exceeds the scope of the research, there’s a transparent bias in opposition to the trade, and leads any goal observer to the conclusion that it is a gotcha operation,” Rozer stated on the time.

The waivers presently permit sure poultry crops to function at line speeds of as much as 175 birds per minute.