Late last month, the Trump administration cleared the way for chicken plants to increase their processing line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute. The change deals a blow to workers and reverses the efforts of labor and animal welfare advocates, who fought to halt poultry line speed increases in 2014. It also indicates the administration will likely soon remove line speed limits in hog slaughter and lower workplace injury reporting requirements throughout all sectors of the economy.

“This decision and the ones we expect are coming up is the pattern of the Trump administration to be cutting back on protections for workers and making decisions in favor of corporations rather than working people,” says Joann Lo, Co-Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance.

The change comes in response to a 2017 petition to the Food Safety and Inspection Service by the National Chicken Council, the lobbying group representing poultry corporations. While FSIS denied the NCC’s request to lift all poultry line speeds, the USDA agency announced in January that they would set criteria by which poultry processors could apply for waivers to increase their line speeds to 175 birds per minute. FSIS released those criteria in February and published their final guidelines and public response to comments on September 28th. The agency is accepting applications for waivers.

Working conditions in poultry processing are already extremely hazardous. According to the Department of Labor, workers in meat processing plants are injured five times more frequently than all other private workers and are nearly twenty times more likely to develop carpal tunnel syndrome. But true injury rates are likely even higher, as studies by the Government Accountability Office suggest that federal data does not capture all meat processing injuries. One reason is that an estimated 28 percent of meat processing workers are foreign-born, and these workers are less likely to report injury or workplace misconduct due to fear of retaliation or deportation.

Surveys by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Food Chain Workers Alliance found that at least two-thirds of poultry workers suffered significant work-related injuries, dwarfing officially reported injury rates.

“Immigrants and refugees are being taken advantage of,” says Mark Lauritsen, director of the United Food and Commercial Worker’s Food Processing, Packing and Manufacturing Division. Indeed, powerful meatpacking corporations have long been able to leverage their position as one of few employers in a given region to drive down wages and working conditions. This exploitation disproportionately affects marginal communities, as 62 percent of all meatpacking workers are people of color.

Higher line speeds are a main cause of these dangerous conditions. At current speeds, poultry workers perform the same repetitive motions 20,000 to 30,000 times a day, often wielding knives in close quarters, increasing the risks of musculoskeletal disorders and accidental cuts. There is so much pressure to keep a constant work pace that workers are often denied breaks, to the point that some wear diapers.

The new 175 birds per minute rate applies to the fastest and partially automated portion of the slaughter process, called the evisceration line. The poultry industry contends that increasing these speeds “would not be expected to have a significant impact on worker safety.”