The Wisconsin-based sanitation services company that hired minors to clean slaughterhouses has lost another contract at a Minnesota meatpacker.
Quality Pork Processors (QPP) in Austin, Minn., recently notified Fortrex it is hiring another company to sanitize the pork plant.
“The unforeseen business circumstances related to Quality Pork Processors’ decision to immediately cease [Fortrex] operations at its plant is not something that we anticipated,” the company wrote in a letter to employees.
Fortrex notified the state this week that 72 employees will be relocated or laid off as of May 3. The company had provided cleaning services at QPP, located near Hormel Foods headquarters, since 2013.
A message left with QPP was not immediately returned Wednesday. Fortrex declined further comment.
Fortrex, formerly known as Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), illegally employed at least 102 minors to work in slaughterhouses around the country in 2022, according to a federal investigation. The company has lost several contracts in the years since.
The department found nearly two dozen teens working at the JBS pork plant in Worthington, Minn., as well as minors employed at Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minn., and Buckhead in St. Cloud.
The U.S. Department of Labor did not allege wrongdoing at Quality Pork Processors.
