Meatpacking still fraught with danger

“He works in a world of long knives and huge saws, blood and bone, arctic chill and sweltering heat. For Martin Cortez, this is life on the line as a meatpacker.

It’s no place for the squeamish. Some workers can’t stomach the gore — chopping up the meat and bones of hundreds of cattle, day after day. Cortez has been at it more than 30 years. It also can be very dangerous. Some workers have been slashed, burned or scarred. He has not.

Even so, Martin Cortez, a soft-spoken man with sad eyes, doesn’t recommend the work. The thrashing animals, the heavy lifting … all that goes into putting steak and hamburger on America’s dinner tables, he says, makes for a backbreaking day on the killing floor.”

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