Fake documents lead to meat security worries
How susceptible are meatpackers to bioterrorism?
Dec. 13, 2006
Tim Vandenack
The Hutchinson News
Some are legal. Others -- no one can say for sure how many -- have forged or stolen documents falsely indicating they are in the United States legally.
Whatever the case, when workers in Kansas' thriving meatpacking industry clock in each day, the only thing on their minds is getting by and improving the lives of their children, Fabian Medrano said.
"That's the only reason they come, to improve their life," said the meatpacker at Dodge City's Cargill Meat Solutions, alluding to the sizable immigrant population employed by the state's packing plants.
But in a world increasingly attuned to security, some are warning of the industry's possible susceptibility to bioterror, in light of faulty safeguards that let workers with false identities slip through the cracks.
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Kastner |
Curtis Kastner, director of Kansas State University's Food Science Institute, said an attack on the product at a meatpacking plant "may not be the highest on a terrorist's priority list." But the ability of an ill-intentioned worker -- with phony papers and bent on sabotage -- trying to get a job in a plant is a "gigantic" concern.
"You need to know who you have, who you're working with," said Kastner, a professor of animal and food science who studies food-safety issues. "What is their intent? Maybe they just want a job, or maybe they're a terrorist."
Even if the deliberate tainting of a plant's meat with E. coli, salmonella, anthrax or some other substance didn't cause any deaths, the possible loss of consumer confidence, here and abroad, could lead to huge financial losses.
A bioterror attack, according to a 2004 study by the Rand Corp., a nonprofit research organization, potentially offers a "low-cost" way for a terrorist to have a "high-yield" effect.
While Kastner worries about the porous U.S.-Mexico border, he expresses faith that meat processors in Kansas are attentive to the bioterror threat.
By the thousands
That illegal immigrants work in Kansas' meatpacking plants is no revelation. The U.S. attorney's office in Kansas has arrested numerous foreign nationals in recent months on charges of using phony identification cards and stolen U.S. Social Security numbers to get jobs in the industry.
"It appears to me there are thousands of illegal aliens in Kansas. It appears to me they're working," said Brent Anderson, a prosecutor who handles criminal immigration cases in the Wichita office of U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren.
He estimates that meatpackers, feedlot workers and others in the ag sector account for most of the identity theft cases he handles.
But while Melgren's office has taken action, getting a handle on illegal immigrants is tough.
New meatpacking plant workers, like any employee in any industry, must fill out Form I-9 when they take a job, ensuring that they're authorized to work in the United States.
The form, filed to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, requires new employees to produce documentation, establishing their identity -- such as a driver's license -- and their eligibility to work here -- such as a U.S. Social Security card.
However, false documents are becoming more sophisticated, and employers who challenge paperwork that looks legitimate risk accusations of discriminatory hiring practices.
Thus, critics say, many undocumented workers slip into the labor force with relative ease.
Parallel to that, turnover brought on by the tough work in a meatpacking plant is steady, keeping on the pressure for fresh workers. Medrano estimates eight to 16 new faces at his plant each week, and incessant recruitment by meatpackers through ads on Spanish-language television in southwest Kansas underscores the demand.
Some packers recruit along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as in Mexico, which might seem a possible invitation to undocumented workers.
Martin Rosas, a labor union leader at packing plants in Liberal and Dodge City who's familiar with the practice, said the companies certainly don't tell Mexicans to enter the country illegally, though he admits job availability can be a strong lure.
For their part, meatpackers increasingly are using the federal Basic Pilot Employment Verification Program to weed out undocumented workers.
That program seeks to verify whether a would-be employee's name and Social Security are legitimate. It's in use by Tyson, which has a plant at Holcomb, along with "a sizable portion" of the industry, said David Ray, spokesman for the American Meat Institute, an industry trade group.
The system, however, isn't without glitches. If a job applicant has fully assumed someone else's identity and has false documents to back up the claim, the program won't necessarily detect them.
Despite it all, migratory status is hardly an indicator for terrorist potential. Setting aside that the key aim of his immigrant co-workers is to better their lives, Medrano notes that many have only a basic education, which might inhibit their ability to pull off a sophisticated bioterror attack.
Michele Waslin of the Hispanic advocacy group National Council of La Raza, cautions against singling out immigrants, alluding to the potential for homegrown terrorists.
Kastner, the K-State professor, warns against complacency and maintains that plants need to get a better handle on their hires in general.
"That's not the way to have a secure system -- (having) undocumented people who're in your system," he said. "The best you can, you need to know who they are."
