On 14th September 2026, more than 100 workers walked out of Smithfield Foods’ plant in Monmouth, Illinois, US, after a colleague died in the early hours of the morning and management ordered production to carry on as normal.
Patou Mpinda, a 44-year-old maintenance employee, was killed in what the company described as a “workplace incident.” The coroner has since confirmed that Mpinda died at around 2.30 am, and that the cause of death appeared to be work related. It was reportedly the fourth death at the plant, but the first caused by a machine.
According to WGEM, staff were first told of a “late start” by text message at approximately 5.30 am. When they arrived at work around 7.30 am, they were informed that Mpinda had died.
A worker who spoke to WGEM said, “I had coworkers in the lunchroom crying and people so stressed that they were yelling at the plant manager: ‘Listen to your people! Why are we here? We shouldn’t be working!’ … I got sick to my stomach and I just didn’t feel right as a person being there … That’s kind of disgraceful, not only to the employee who had passed, but to all employees of the company, and to his friends and family. No respect, making the employees work after that had happened. Like he was just a number.”
Smithfield Foods later said staff were given the option to leave without penalty. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and local authorities are investigating Mpinda’s death.
Following an anonymous complaint in February, OSHA inspected the plant and fined Smithfield Foods $9,931.60 after finding workers exposed to amputation hazards. The plant had already received serious citations in 2021, 2023, and 2025.
The animals killed in the meat industry are not the only victims. In the US, there are approximately two amputations a week in the meat industry, largely due to poor working conditions and excessively fast line speeds. In 2024, Sentient Media wrote about how slaughterhouse workers experience depression levels four times higher than the national average. This conclusion was based on a 2021 review paper published in the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse. It also showed how these workers also experience an increased likelihood of anxiety, psychoticism, anger, hostility and somatisation (physical illnesses often associated with stress, with no known direct cause).
