Rural Counties with Large Meatpacking Firms: Implications for Community Health

Abstract

SUMMARY Rural meatpacking plants became common since refrigerated train cars provided a low-cost method for shipping meat to urban markets. A wave of industrial restructure in the 1970s and 1980s included reductions in hourly wages and job benefits accompanied by an accelerated line-speed. Local communities now struggle to provide adequate health and social services for their new working-poor populations. This investigation extends research on the impact of large meatpacking plants on rural Iowa counties. Demographics, measurements of population health status, and Medicaid utilization rates are compared across two groups of rural Iowa counties with meatpacking plants and the mean for rural counties without such plants. Analyses revealed significantly sharp increases in the rate of breast cancer mortality and the rate of participation in the Medicaid program from the mid-1980s to the early-1990s for rural counties with large meatpacking plants. Sudden introduction of a packing plant in the 1980s did not co...