‘Navigating in Guts’: a Former Worker Exposes Conditions Inside Slaughterhouse

It’s been over two years since David Olmos Herrera worked at the JBS Swift & Co slaughterhouse in Louisville, Kentucky, but he can still remember the perpetual filth, the heat from the massive by-product cooker and the smell of dead animals. At the Butchertown area plant, around 10,000 pigs are slaughtered and processed every day. And the killing never stops, according to Olmos Herrera, even when equipment breaks down. As a result, he says, the overflowing animal parts and fluids — and the overpowering smell — created near-impossible working conditions.

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Pig “heads start just falling on the floor and piling up to the point that you can’t even walk through,” Olmos Herrera recounts, adding that it would become difficult to breathe inside due to the pungent smell. “They don’t let us open any door or gate,” he adds, to avoid odor complaints from nearby residents. In those days, going into work was “painful, sad,” and he wished he could call in sick. Only when outdoors, “when you’re loading trucks,” he says, “is when you kind of breathe.”

Since leaving his job at the slaughterhouse, Olmos Herrera has taken to social media to expose the working conditions at the pork plant. “It’s totally insane,” he says, “the way they treat people over there.”

Slaughterhouse Work is High Risk

Slaughterhouse work is among the most dangerous jobs in the United States. USDA research shows about 46% of pork processing workers face a high risk of injury due to repetitive, high-speed tasks. These tasks can also cause chronic pain and long-term disabilities. That number jumps to 81% for poultry workers, who routinely handle sharp tools on fast-moving lines, where injuries, amputations and severe strain are common.

The disproportionately high number of immigrants working in the slaughter industry includes undocumented workers who rarely report injuries due to fear of retaliation or job loss. Reports of low wages, unsafe conditions and limited labor protections further entrench this imbalance of power.

Recently, 3,800 JBS workers walked out of a Colorado plant, marking the first major U.S. slaughterhouse strike in 40 years. PBS reports that the strike comes after accusations from union leaders that JBS “retaliated against workers and committed other unfair labor practices amid contract negotiations.”

A History of Complaints

JBS is the world’s largest meat processing company. Its Louisville plant opened in 1969 as a Swift & Company facility that then became part of JBS Swift Pork Co. after JBS acquired Swift in 2007.

The plant has long faced pushback from the community over its stench. In 2017, the city of Louisville reached a settlement with the JBS Swift plant over repeated odor complaints dating back to 2011. The company was required to pay about $124,500 in fines and hire an independent third party to review its rendering operations.

However, the issue has persisted since the 2017 settlement. According to the city’s Air Pollution Control District, the main sources of the smells are from pig feces, bleach and the rendering process. The latter has been reported as a rancid smell like “burning baby dolls.” Reports also state that the city’s odor regulators recorded at least 600 complaints between 2019 and 2025.

In 2022, a resident filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the local community against the company over alleged “noxious odors.” Under the proposed settlement, the company would be required to spend $430,000 on upgrades to reduce odors that may be detected off-site, pay $500,000 to a fund for residents living within one mile of the plant, and the company would not admit wrongdoing. Recently, an expert from the Animal Legal Defense Fund told the media that the settlement would not address ongoing environmental and animal harms caused by the industry.

The Louisville plant was also evacuated in 2023 due to an ammonia leak and in 2024 due to a sodium bisulfite leak.

Broken Equipment and Hazardous Conditions

Olmos Herrera recalls the suffocating smells inside the slaughterhouse firsthand. He worked at the Louisville plant from 2006 to 2023, starting out in the cutting room, where he cut pigs’ loins with a large knife. He then moved into different equipment maintenance departments and eventually became a supervisor in rendering. In the rendering area, inedible animal parts, such as bones, fat, blood, hair and offal, are processed under high heat. Then they are separated into raw ingredients, including tallow and meat and bone meal, that can be used to make products like fertilizer, soap, lubricants and pet food.

While working in rendering, Olmos Herrera says his bosses had him use his personal phone to record videos of failing equipment for them, since they “didn’t want to go down there to verify what’s broken — they don’t want to get stinky and dirty.”

One of these videos shows overflowing animal blood from a malfunctioning coagulator — a machine used to turn animal blood into a solid. And some of the blood appears to be draining into a city sewer. The discharge of animal waste and wastewater from meat processing facilities is typically regulated under federal and local laws, including limits on discharge into public sewer systems.

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When asked what safeguards are in place to prevent improper discharge, a JBS representative wrote in an email that the company “maintains controlled drainage systems, conducts routine inspections and provides ongoing oversight of rendering and wastewater operations to prevent improper discharge and ensure full regulatory compliance.”

In another video, animal parts spill off conveyor belts and onto the floor because the augers meant to keep the production line moving are broken. “Everything breaks down,” Olmos Herrera says. No one offered help and no proactive maintenance was provided. He describes the circumstances as “basically navigating in guts and poor conditions.”

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According to the JBS representative, the conditions captured by Olmos Herrera were “prior to subsequent operational improvements,” adding that “we have continued to enhance our processes to further strengthen performance and oversight.”

Federal sanitation regulations require meat processing facilities to operate using procedures that prevent unsanitary conditions and contamination of products. Olmos Herrera’s videos and descriptions of overflowing animal parts and fluids because of equipment failures raise questions about how the slaughter facility maintains and monitors sanitation conditions.

In response to an email from Sentient, a JBS representative states that its Louisville facility “operates under strict safety, sanitation, and compliance standards,” and that employees follow “well-established procedures for equipment monitoring, spill containment, and sanitation during every shift.” It adds that any equipment malfunction is “addressed immediately, with the affected area isolated and corrective actions taken before operations resume.”

According to a spokesperson for the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Inspectors are onsite during all hours of operation at the JBS Swift Louisville facility conducting ongoing verification of food safety, humane handling, and sanitation requirements,” including oversight of rendering. “In practice,” they add, “FSIS inspection personnel observe operations in real time, verify that sanitation procedures are implemented, and document and address any observed noncompliance.” 

Sharing the ‘Guts’ via Social Media

Olmos Herrera says he was also uncomfortable with the way he felt he was expected to treat those working under him. “They want you as a supervisor to be with [like] the whip, whipping them and making them work like a modern slave. And I’m not that kind of person.” He added that 12-hour shifts would often turn into 14-15-hour shifts, and “it’s not good for me,” he says, “I don’t think it’s fair.”

After leaving, Olmos Herrera did not forget his former workmates and has stayed in touch with some who are still working there. For their sake, he felt compelled to share his experience working at the slaughterhouse and the conditions he and his coworkers endured by posting the videos and photos he captured to social media, where he now has over 90,000 followers across Instagram and Facebook.

The videos may be hard to watch, but Olmos Herrera wants people to know what’s going on inside the facility, including standard operations and typical working conditions, such as workers sawing carcasses, pig heads running along a conveyor belt and bones being crushed in a mill. There is a stark difference in the appearance of cleanliness and working environment between the area where food is produced for human consumption and the rendering area. Though there appears to be blood-covered floors in both areas.

In another video, live pigs are shown in a barren concrete pen with the video labelled “before and after,” later showing piles of dry meat and bone meal, which Olmos Herrera explains is used as fertilizer.

More recently, Olmos Herrera has also been posting videos from another employee who remained on the job for a period after Olmos Herrera left. They show employee facilities, including a locker room and an office area, both of which appear to be filthy.

Overall, Olmos Herrera’s social media efforts seem to be having an impact, with some commenters expressing concern about the working conditions at the slaughterhouse and others posting that they have reduced or stopped eating meat after watching the footage.

For Olmos Herrera, the overall goal of using social media to share his years of gathered footage is to expose the sights, sounds and smells of the slaughterhouse, in hopes that things will improve.