USDA inspectors complained about chemicals sprayed on poultry. They were ignored.

In 2002, Robertson began working as a part-time poultry inspector at a turkey processing plant in Moroni, Utah, a 20-minute drive from her home. It was a good job in a place where steady employment was hard to come by, she thought at the time, even if it entailed checking the carcasses of turkeys rotating by at speeds that made spotting defects — and avoiding repetitive strain injuries — challenging. By 2008, Robertson had become a full-time consumer safety inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the years that followed, she also had three elbow surgeries and sustained a serious nerve injury in her neck.

After completing six months of physical therapy for the neck pain, Robertson figured her health problems were behind her. But in 2015, she started to experience some stranger symptoms — itchy eyes, shortness of breath, coughing fits. At work, she noticed, her voice would start to cut out by the middle of the week. By week’s end, she could hardly speak. She also started waking up at night with a bloody nose. Robertson wasn’t the only employee experiencing odd symptoms. Another USDA inspector, Tina McClellan, with whom Robertson was close friends, complained to her of headaches, nausea, and respiratory problems. Line workers at the plant confided to Robertson that they, too, were falling ill.

Read the article: ttps://theintercept.com/2018/07/18/moroni-utah-turkey-farm-workers-norbest
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