NBC documentary on children working in slaughterhouses features Hattiesburg teen's death

The death of a 16-year-old working at Hattiesburg's Mar-Jac Poultry plant in July made national headlines, but many other teens are working illegally at slaughterhouses throughout the nation, an investigation by NBC News discovered.

Duvan Perez, an indigenous Mayan from Guatemala, died July 14 while cleaning equipment at the poultry processing plant. Federal child labor laws prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from working at any meat-processing plant.

"Slaughterhouse Children: Child Labor Exposed in America’s Food Industry” focuses on Perez's death in its yearlong investigation that spans "two countries and six states, dozens of interviews and the review of thousands of pages of public records, accident reports and internal corporate documents," according to the NBC story.

Click here to watch the NBC News video documentary

Perez allegedly was hired by an unnamed staffing agency while using the identity of a 32-year-old man.

"Within hours of his death, questions about his true age were raised by a local Facebook news site, and he was soon determined to be 16," NBC reported.

Hattiesburg Patriot News Media was first to report the teen's age and that he was working under a false identity.

During research for the documentary, Mar-Jac confirmed to NBC News that Perez had used the identity of a man in his 30s.

Shown a picture of the 16-year-old, Mar-Jac attorney Larry Stine, who has represented the Georgia-based company since the 1990s, said Perez did not look like a 32-year-old man.

“But he might have looked 18,” Stine told NBC News.

The NBC News documentary highlights the ease with which migrant children like Perez are finding work in the dangerous industry and the challenges companies face in trying to evaluate their employees' actual names and ages.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports the number of children working illegally has skyrocketed across all industries, nearly doubling since 2019, the documentary reports.

Mar-Jac said it has reviewed its entire workforce and does not believe that it is employing anyone under 18. Stine said the company is limited in how much scrutiny it can apply to the documentation beyond the government’s E-Verify system:

“Under the way the rules are set up, we’re limited," Stine told NBC News. "They gave us this documentation, we cannot look into it.”

The Labor Department, however, said that it is up to the companies to conduct due diligence when hiring workers to determine if they are legally old enough to do the job.

After Perez’s death, the Labor Department launched an investigation into how Mar-Jac hired a teenager and a separate Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into the accident itself. Both investigations remain ongoing.

Less than two weeks after Perez's death, the Department of Labor announced results of an investigation by its newly formed child labor task force in its efforts to combat exploitative child labor practices nationwide.

"Between Oct. 1, 2022, and July 20, 2023, as a result of this stepped-up enforcement, the agency concluded 765 child labor cases finding 4,474 children employed in violation of federal child labor laws," the DOL reported. "These cases reflect a 44% increase in children found employed in violation of federal law from the same time period in the previous fiscal year. In addition, the agency is currently pursuing more than 700 open child labor cases."

NBC News reported that new child labor concerns in the U.S. first emerged in fall 2022, when the Labor Department announced it had found more than 30 children illegally working the graveyard shift for Packers Sanitation Services Inc., a company that cleans some of the nation's biggest slaughterhouses. That number grew to 102 children on further investigation.

Other similar companies are under investigation after facing similar allegations, including Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Hearthside Food Solutions and Gerber’s Poultry in Ohio. The companies have said in separate statements that they are cooperating with the Labor Department and have strict policies against hiring anyone under 18, NBC News reported.

To learn more about Perez's death and the NBC News investigation into children allegedly working in slaughterhouses, visit nbcnews.com/video/slaughterhouse-children-child-labor-exposed-in-america-s-food-industry-200320069879.

Do you have a story to share? Contact Lici Beveridge at lbeveridge@gannett.com. Follow her on X @licibev or Facebook at facebook.com/licibeveridge.

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Slaughterhouse children: NBC documentary features death of MS teen