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US meat production involves fewer and larger operations, often in remote areas, raising questions about the labor and community impacts of an expanding animal agriculture. With both the labor forces and processing industries becoming more "foreign," many rural communities may face a choice between depopulation if meatpacking industries close and diversity if they remain open and attract immigrant workers.

Americans consume an average 223 pounds of meat a year, including 88 pounds of chicken, 68 pounds of beef, 50 pounds of pork, 16 pounds of turkey and a pound of lamb.

Managing the diversity that often accompanies vertical integration and immigrant work forces in meat production is not easy. Many farmers have contracts with hog or poultry processors that make them "practically employees," since the processor provides the feed and specifies how the hogs and chickens are to be raised. Farmers provide the land and buildings to raise the hogs or chickens and their income is the difference between what the processor pays and the costs of production. Most contract farmers are long-time local residents, but in some areas immigrants have become contract farmers, as in northwestern Arkansas poultry.

As livestock farming operations get larger, they raise the same labor questions that have been raised by crop farms that are so-called factories in the fields. Dairy farms with 10,000 cows can have several hundred full-time employees, most of whom are immigrants from Mexico. Concern about working conditions in the fields have led to federal and state legislation to require employers to provide toilets and, more recently, to protect workers from pesticides.

There have been fewer efforts to improve safety in what were traditionally smaller and family-operated crop and livestock farms, even though workers compensation data suggest more injuries on such farms. Two unauthorized Mexicans died in Gustine, California at a 1,700 cow dairy operated by Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. The dairy operators were charged in the deaths of the migrants in an effort to get dairies to take worker safety more seriously.

The United Food and Commercial Workers is trying to organize immigrant workers employed in poultry plants in southern states, joining with other unions as well as local churches and NGOs to give workers a voice in setting the speed of the dis-assembly line. The Gold Kist plant in Russellville, Alabama has 1,500 mostly Hispanic employees and pays a base wage of $8.40 an hour, with a $0.75 an hour bonus for those who arrive every day on time. Gold Kist workers twice rejected union representation in the 1990s, and unions in 2005 are hoping that the broader coalition will lead to a victory.

At a Koch Foods poultry plant in Morristown, Tennessee, the line ran at 42 chickens a minute, and disputes over bathroom breaks for the 700 mostly immigrant women led to a UFCW "community unionism" drive. The top wage is $7.55 an hour, and many workers say they do not participate in the health insurance offered because they cannot afford the employee's share of the premium. Because of the community support, Koch did not oppose the union, which is expected to win an election to represent Koch workers.

How does an influx of migrants affect often small rural communities? Sonya Salamon's book, "Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland," explores the impacts of newcomers on six small towns in central Illinois, ranging from upscale subdivisions that lured wealthy professionals to meatpacking towns that drew working-class Mexican migrants. She concludes that, when the social status of the newcomers differs significantly from established residents, demographic change erodes close-knit small town communities, with local youth and the elderly among the most disoriented by the changing faces of their towns.

A Hmong immigrant from St. Paul, Minnesota killed six white hunters in northern Wisconsin in November 2004, saying they swore at him and used ethnic slurs after they found him trespassing on private land. He will be tried in Madison.

The first Supreme Court case under new Chief Justice John Roberts in October 2005 was IBP vs Alvarez, and involved the question of whether meatpacking employees, who are compensated for the time that it takes them to put on protective work gear, should also be compensated for the time it takes them to walk to their place on the dis-assembly line to work. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that workers should be paid for the average 4.4 minutes of walking time, while the First Circuit Court of Appeals said that they should not be paid for walking time because of the provisions of the Portal-to-Portal Act.

The Portal-to-Portal Act says that employers do not have to pay for actions "preliminary or postliminary" to a job's "principal activity," which a 1956 Supreme Court ruling said meant that employers must pay workers if the actions in question are "integral and indispensable" to the job's "principal activities." The First Circuit ruled that employees do not begin their principal activities until they arrive at the dis-assembly line, while the Ninth Circuit ruled that, once dressed in protective clothing for work, the employees have begun their principal activities.

Steven Greenhouse, "Union Organizers at Poultry Plants in South Find Newly Sympathetic Ears," New York Times, September 6, 2005. Salamon, Sonya. 2003. Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland. University of Chicago.