Worker death at Mary’s Chicken poultry plant near Fresno ‘totally preventable,’ expert says

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The workplace death of a 19-year-old crushed by a semi-truck at Pitman Family Farms could have been avoided if better safety protocols were in place, according to local police who responded to the scene and safety experts contacted by The Bee.

In late February, poultry plant worker Jose Abrego was killed when run over by a semi-truck at the Pitman plant in Sanger, the second death in a year at the facility and the fifth death in nine years at the company’s California operations, which include the Sanger poultry processing facility, a network of ranches, and an industrial feed mill. State workplace safety authorities, Cal/OSHA are still investigating Abrego’s death.

The Bee obtained the Sanger Police Department incident report and police body camera video footage from the night of Abrego’s death via a California Public Records Act request. According to those records, Abrego was assigned to wash a semi-truck sometime before midnight on Tuesday, Feb. 20. Shortly after, another worker went to move the truck to another area so forklift operators could unload it, the written police report said. The driver did not see Abrego and ended up running him over and killing him with the truck, the report says. Abrego’s clothing might have become hooked on a broken truck fender and might have prevented him from moving out of harm’s way, according to the police report. Police were called two minutes before midnight, and Abrego was pronounced dead by paramedics at 12:07 a.m., Feb 21, the report says.

The Fresno Bee asked Richard Carr, an independent trucking litigation consultant with 40 years of trucking, safety and risk management experience to review the written police report and video footage and offer his assessment. Carr also worked for three years in the past as an accident investigator with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a government agency that investigates and regulates commercial trucking safety.

Carr said the police report and police body camera video footage indicate “process failures” in the company’s operations, such as allowing truck-washing near a loading/unloading area. He also took note of the“amazingly dark” working conditions, few workers wearing reflective clothing, and apparent confusion about who at the work area was responsible for plant safety, issues he said that were evident from his watching of the video footage that showed the scene and contained police interviews with workers and other potential witnesses.

”That accident was totally preventable just by changing some of the with the UC Merced Community & Labor Center, echoed Carr’s concerns in an April interview with The Bee. As of May, she leads the office of worker health and safety for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Berliner did not review the video footage, but generally speaking, she stressed that workplace areas where cargo is being loaded and unloaded need to be operated with basic safety measures in place: Workers should wear reflective clothing, the cargo area should have bright, overhead lighting when it’s dark, and there should be clear procedures for unloading and loading goods, including markers on the floor indicating safe areas to walk to avoid trucks and forklifts, she said.

“In the worker health and safety field, there are really clear practices in place in worksites where you have moving vehicles alongside workers or heavy machinery alongside workers,” she said.

The Sanger police officer who filled out the incident report and was on the scene that night noted that it made sense the tragedy happened, given “there did not seem to be much safety precautions put in place or enforced to prevent this type of incident.”

Labor leaders told The Bee that Abrego’s death likely wouldn’t have occurred if adequate safety protocols and union protections were in place at the non-unionized company.

The Bee sent an email with a list of questions to David Pitman, owner of Pitman Family Farms, asking for comment about Carr’s findings and the workplace death. Pitman declined in a return email to answer the specific questions or offer comment for this report. In a previous email statement to The Bee, Pitman said he is “committed to the health and well-being of his family, our work team, and the families we serve.”

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Abrego’s death was the second death in less than a year at the family-owned poultry processing plant — a company known for its humanely-raised brand of poultry, Mary’s Chicken. Last May, 66-year-old Jesus Salazar drowned in a poultry waste pit at the facility.

At least four employees have died at Pitman Family Farms’ California operations since 2015. A fifth person was killed when a Pitman employee in a tractor hit and killed a truck driver from an outside company who was on the grounds of a company facility. A February Fresno Bee investigation details these fatalities and found that the company had a higher-than-average rate of injuries compared to other local poultry processing plants, according to a Bee analysis of publicly available federal injury data.

A recent report from the AFL-CIO labor union found that in 2022 Latino workers across industries face the greatest risk of dying on the job — a rate that has increased 24% over the past 10 years.

‘Amazingly dark’

Carr, the trucking accident expert, described the outdoor area of the poultry plant where Abrego had been assigned to wash the truck as “amazingly dark.”

Sanger police reported that few workers were wearing reflective gear and that the area was poorly lit “and required external lighting from emergency vehicles to properly assess the scene.”

Even if workers were wearing reflective gear, Carr said, it would be ineffective without more lighting.

Depending on the specific job, Cal/OSHA requires nighttime agricultural operations, such as poultry plants, to have a mix of high visibility garments, vehicle-mounted lights, portable lights and head lamps. The agency also requires safety meetings at the start of each shift.

One key question for Carr: Why was Abrego assigned to wash the truck in an area where another worker was assigned to move the vehicle?

There should be separate areas for maintenance work, washing and loading/unloading of trucks, he said. “You don’t blend those areas together.”

Carr also said “the (company’s) response just didn’t seem right.”

Carr said that in the video footage there was someone in civilian clothing asking to see the body. Otherwise, Carr said, there didn’t seem to be a safety or plant manager taking responsibility. The Pitman executive in the video identified himself to police as David Rubenstein, vice president of operations.

Police noted in the incident report that a “manager” also arrived to the scene after being notified of the incident. But most questions were answered by a third person, an area supervisor who told police on the video that he oversees 140 workers, including employees who might have witnessed the fatality or who were in the area, according to the police body camera footage.

“If you’re a supervisor, if you’re a plant manager, if you’re a director of operations or whatever, they’re all your people and they’re all your responsibility and somebody just died,” said Carr, offering his opinion after watching and analyzing the video, “and they don’t seem too concerned about it.”