Immigration Enforcement and Food Safety: Evidence from US Meat and Poultry Processing Plants

Sampada Wagle and Bhagyashree Katarej

No 360898, 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Immigrant labor constitutes a substantial portion of the US meat and poultry processing workforce. However, the downstream effects of deportations targeting these immigrants on their food safety practices remain largely unexamined. We provide novel empirical evidence that increased deportations of undocumented immigrants are associated with a rise in food safety inspection violations, suggestive of reduced food safety quality at these establishments. We also find evidence that wages and labor market dynamics adjust in ways consistent with labor shortages following deportations, marked by increases in wages, hires, separations, and employment, along with a modest reduction in turnover. By examining the potential downstream food safety risks associated with deportations, this research contributes to the broader policy discussion about the spillover effects of immigration enforcement on food safety and consumer welfare.

Keywords: Food; Consumption/Nutrition/Food; Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/360898/files/7 ... 5300_AAEA_June18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea25:360898

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.360898

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().