I wonder what Fabian Medrano would be using for an excuse if bioterrorism does happen at one of these plants?

http://www.hutchnews.com/news/regional/ ... 1306.shtml

Abundance of fake documents leads to meat security worries

By Tim Vandenack

The Hutchinson News
Dechant Sheer Minerals

tvandenack@hutchnews .com


Some are legal, others - no one can say for sure how many - have forged or stolen documents falsely indicating they are in the United States legally.

Whatever the case, when workers in Kansas' thriving meatpacking industry clock in each day, the only thing on their minds is getting by and opening doors for their children, says Fabian Medrano.

"That's the only reason they come, to improve their life," said the meatpacker at Dodge City's Cargill Meat Solutions, alluding to the sizable immigrant population employed by the state's packing plants.

But in a world increasingly attuned to security, some are warning of the industry's possible susceptibility to bioterrorism in light of faulty safeguards that let workers with false identities slip through the cracks.

Curtis Kastner, director of Kansas State University's Food Science Institute, says an attack on the product at a meatpacking plant "may not be the highest on a terrorist's priority list." But the ability of an ill-intentioned worker bent on sabotage to get a job in a plant with phony papers is a "gigantic" concern.

"You need to know who you have, who you're working with," said Kastner, a professor of animal and food science who studies food-safety issues. "What is their intent? Maybe they just want a job, or maybe they're a terrorist."

Even if the deliberate tainting of a plant's meat with E. coli, salmonella, anthrax or some other substance didn't cause any deaths, the possible loss of consumer confidence, here and abroad, could lead to huge financial losses.

A bio-terror attack, according to a 2004 study by the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization, potentially offers a "low-cost" way for a terrorist to have a "high-yield" impact.

Broadly, Kastner, while worried about the porous U.S.-Mexico border, expresses faith that meat processors in Kansas are attentive to the bio-terror threat.

Nonetheless, worries persist about internal security risks and how employees gaining entry with false documents could increase those risks.

'Thousands of illegal workers'

That illegal immigrants work in Kansas' meatpacking plants is no revelation. The U.S. Attorney's office here in Kansas has arrested numerous foreign nationals in recent months on charges of using phony identification cards and stolen U.S. Social Security numbers to get jobs in the industry.

"It appears to me there are thousands of illegal aliens in Kansas. It appears to me they're working," said Brent Anderson, a prosecutor who handles criminal immigration cases in the Wichita office of U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren.

He estimates that meatpackers, feedlot workers and others in the ag sector account for most of the identity theft cases he handles.

But though Melgren's office has been cracking down, getting a handle on illegal immigrants is tough.

New meatpacking plant workers, like any employee in any industry, must fill out Form I-9 when they take a job, assuring that they are authorized to work in the United States.

The form, filed to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, requires new employees to produce documentation establishing their identity, such as a driver's license, and their eligibility to work here, such as a U.S. Social Security card.

However, false documents are more and more sophisticated, and employers who challenge paperwork that looks legitimate risk accusations of discriminatory hiring practices.

Thus, critics say, many undocumented workers slip into the labor force with relative ease.

Parallel to that, turnover brought on by the tough work in a meatpacking plant is steady, keeping the pressure up for fresh workers. Medrano estimates eight to 16 new faces at his plant each week, and incessant recruitment by meatpackers through ads on Spanish-language television in southwest Kansas underscores the demand.

Some packers recruit along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as in Mexico, which might seem a possible invitation to undocumented workers.

Martin Rosas, a labor union leader at packing plants in Liberal and Dodge City who's familiar with the practice, said the companies certainly don't tell Mexicans to enter the country illegally, though he admits job availability can be a strong lure.

For their part, meatpackers are using the federal Basic Pilot Employment Verification Program more and more to weed out undocumented workers.

Tyson, which has a plant at Holcomb, uses the system - which verifies whether a would-be employee's name and Social Security are legitimate - along with "a sizable portion" of the industry, says David Ray, spokesman for the American Meat Institute, an industry trade group.

The system, however, isn't without glitches. If a job applicant has fully assumed someone else's identity and has false documents to back up the claim, the Basic Pilot program won't necessarily detect them.

Despite it all, migratory status is hardly an indicator for terrorist potential. Setting aside that the key aim of his immigrant coworkers is to better their lives, Medrano notes that many have only a basic education that might inhibit their ability to pull off a sophisticated bio-terror attack.