Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz awarded up to $126,000 in taxpayer funds to meat processor JBS after an investigation revealed some of the company’s processing plants were cleaned using child labor.
The U.S. Department of Labor found in February 2023 that at least 31 children were employed “in hazardous occupations to clean dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts at JBS USA plants,” though they were employed by a third-party cleaning service rather than by JBS directly.
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Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education then announced a grant in June to fund job training for 28 staff members at the JBS plant in Worthington, Minnesota — a plant at which at least 22 children had been illegally employed to clean.
“These career growth and training opportunities allow Minnesotans to get ahead in their careers while helping businesses recruit and retain talent,” Walz said of the program in June. “It’s a win-win.”
JBS has been involved in a slew of other scandals, including a lawsuit filed by McDonald’s against JBS and a variety of other beef producers for allegedly conspiring to limit the supply of beef and increase prices. Meanwhile, the company’s Brazil-based parent company J&F Investments SA pled guilty to foreign bribery charges in October 2020, agreeing to pay a fine of over $250 million.
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Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York also sued JBS in February, alleging the company misled consumers about its environmental impact.
“Walz just got busted for shoveling taxpayer dollars to a corporation that was USING MIGRANT CHILDREN to clean slaughterhouses,” Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wrote in an X post Friday. “Literal slavery.”
Neither the Harris-Walz campaign or JBS immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.