Mar-Jac Poultry said it was unaware that a worker who died in a workplace accident on July 14 was underage, and had the company known, he would not have been an employee at the company’s plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
The accident occurred as the employee became entangled in equipment he was cleaning. NBC News identified the worker as Duvan Tomas Perez, whom relatives said was a 16-year-old Guatemalan immigrant and middle school student.
Perez’s obituary said he was a ninth grader at N.R. Burger Middle School, and his hobbies included being outside with his siblings, working on his car, going to the gym and listening to music.
In a press release, Mar-Jac Poultry said the company was unaware of his age, and that he had actually been hired by a staffing company with which Mar-Jac contracts.
“This tragedy was compounded when we learned that the victim was a minor,” the company stated in its release. “Due to an unprecedently tight labor market, Mar-Jac MS relies on staffing companies to fill position at its facility.”
The company added that it didn’t condone the hiring of minors.
“These companies’ contracts with Mar-Jac MS require them to verify that every applicant is legally qualified to work before they start any job. This includes verifying their identity (including age) and immigration status using the I-9 form prescribed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and through the government’s E-Verify system. Mar-Jac MS relies on these companies to complete these checks and it is a condition of their contracts with Mar-JacMS that they do so for every job applicant, without exception,” the company stated.
The incident is being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which Mar-Jac said it notified immediately after the incident.
“Although the investigation is still ongoing, it appears now that this worker was less than 18 years of age and should not have been hired. Mar-Jac MS would never knowingly put any employee, and certainly not a minor, in harm’s way, but at this point in the investigation, that this individual’s age and identity were misrepresented on the paperwork,” Mar-Jac said.
The identity of the company that hired Perez has not yet been disclosed. However, Mar-Jac said it is “undertaking a thorough audit” with the staffing companies to ensure that this kind of error never happens again.
This incident marks the third fatality to occur at the Hattiesburg plant in recent history. On December 15, 2020, Joel Velasco Toto died after an incident in the plant’s battery changing room. Police said that incident occurred as a result of horseplay.
Then, on May 31, 2021, Bobby Butler was killed while working with evisceration machinery in the plant.
The Hattiesburg poultry plant has been a part of Mar-Jac Poultry’s operations since 2014, when the company acquired the former assets of poultry integrator Marshall Durbin Cos. located in Alabama and Mississippi in 2014.
Mar-Jac Poultry, according to the WATTPoultry.com Top Poultry Companies Database, is the 15th largest poultry producer in the United States, having processed 15.88 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis during the past year.
