The air inside the plants is not always clean, and airborne bacteria can harm the meat. These bacteria can cause shelf life to be shorter, and produce meat that is harmful to consume. A numberless amount of processing plants have a great deal of water waste that they dump into nearby lakes and rivers. There is a Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance in several states that can help plants manage their waste better. Studies have shown that to reduce the pollution these plants produce, the plants must switch from heavy fuel to natural gas or wood chips. There is evidence that a vegetarian diet can help reduce this by causing less production of meat, thus fewer production …show more content…
“On average, meatpacking workers are injured at a rate of 27.6 per 100 workers- double the average of all manufacturing workers. Human rights watch called meatpacking the most dangerous factory job in America” (3). To help those who work in this industry, it would be wise to try to raise the safety rules. Living off a vegetarian diet might not help as much as needed, but it would still help. However, even though working in a factory is dangerous, does not mean the work should not be done. According to the US Department of Labor, the occupation with the highest mortality rate in 2009 was construction work, followed by truck drivers. Arguably, vegetarians can help these workers by removing their jobs all together. This may also cause problems seeing that the workers will have no job to do, which is worse than having a dangerous