By Devona Walker
Staff Writer
On the killing floors of U.S. slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants, work is tedious at times, arduous at others. It's a complicated maze of conveyor belts, bloodied hooks and bone-severing knives, with some of the highest worker casualty rates of all labor sectors.


The work has not changed much. But the demographic of its workers and pay has changed radically. So have many communities in Oklahoma's Panhandle that owe their livelihoods to the killing floor. Midwestern towns have been culturally, economically and demographically transformed.

"Back then, most everybody in town worked at the meatpacking plant,â€