A Mississippi poultry processing plant has agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor that requires it to pay $164,814 in fines and put in place enhanced safety measures following the death of a 16-year-old boy at the facility

HATTIESBURG, Miss. — A Mississippi poultry processing plant has agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor that requires it to pay $164,814 in fines and put in place enhanced safety measures following the death of a 16-year-old boy at the facility.

The agreement, announced Friday in a news release, comes after an investigation of Mar-Jac Poultry by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration into the death of an underaged worker who was pulled into a machine as they cleaned it July 14, 2023.

“Tragically, a teenage boy died needlessly before Mar-Jac Poultry took required steps to protect its workers,” said OSHA Regional Administrator Kurt Petermeyer in Atlanta. “This settlement demands the company commit to a safer workplace environment and take tangible actions to protect their employees from well-known hazards. Enhanced supervision and increased training can go a long way toward minimizing risks faced by workers in meat processing facilities.”

“Mar-Jac was aware of these safety problems for years and had been warned and fined by OSHA, yet did nothing. Hopefully, Mar-Jac will follow through this time so that no other worker is killed in such a senseless manner,” Jim Reeves, an attorney for the victim’s family, told WHLT-TV.

The victim’s family sued Mar-Jac Poultry MS, LLC, and Onin Staffing earlier this year. The lawsuit alleges that Perez was killed due to Mar-Jac ignoring safety regulations and not turning off machinery during sanitation. The suit also claims Onin Staffing was negligent in illegally assigning the 16-year-old to work at the plant.

Headquartered in Gainesville, Georgia, Mar-Jac Poultry has raised live birds for poultry production since 1954 at facilities in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi for food service customers in the U.S and abroad, the DOL’s news release said.

A telephone call Friday to the company seeking comment about the settlement was not answered.

A fossil hunter in Mississippi recently unearthed an intact mammoth ivory 7 feet long.

Believing it was the tusk of a mastodon, a far more common proboscidean in the area, Eddie Templeton was nevertheless ecstatic to find one that wasn’t fragmented.

But it was only after scientists arrived from the Mississippi Museum of Natural History and were able to examine it that the real former owner of the tusk became clear. It was the ivory of a Colombian mammoth—the largest mammoth in North America, and rarely documented this far south.

He has found mastodon teeth, jaws, saber-tooth cat gnashers, and other Ice Age treasures, but the size, majestic curl, and rarity of the ivory surely places it not only among the most remarkable finds of Templeton’s career, but among the most remarkable in the state’s history, as it’s the first time an intact tusk from this species has been found in the Magnolia State.

“Mississippi was home to three Proboscideans during the last ice age: Mastodon, Gomphothere, and the Columbian mammoth. All three possessed ivory tusks,” the Mississippi Museum of Natural History wrote in a statement regarding the discovery.

“Mastodons are by far the most common Proboscidean finds in Mississippi as they were browsers, like modern deer, and inhabited a variety of different environments. Mammoths which were related to modern elephants are far less common finds in Mississippi as they were open grassland grazers and would have been at home in only a select few environments, particularly the prairie regions of Mississippi.”

The Columbian mammoth could grow 10 feet tall and weigh 15 tons, but despite this size advantage, the smaller wooly mammoth outlived them by about 6,000 years.

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The ivory was transported to the Museum of Natural History after being covered in tin foil, slathered with plaster, and wrapped in burlap—the technical procedure for exhuming a fossil from the ground.

Once the plaster jacket containing the fossil tusk dried, it was carefully lifted onto a makeshift gurney fashioned from an ATV ramp. The fossil specimen in the jacket weighed about 600 pounds.

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Stuck in the mud for over 10,000 years, the tusk is well preserved, but contact with oxygen can cause rapid deterioration, so once the covering is removed, a glaze rather like the kind used to laminate safety glass in car windows will be applied in order to put the ivory on display, slated for spring 2025.

SHARE The News Of This Incredible Discovery With Your Friends… 

STARKVILLE – Two weeks ago, Ilana Izquierdo was in Paris representing Colombia in the women’s soccer tournament. Thursday night, she was in Starkville kicking off No. 15 Mississippi State’s season with the first goal in the third minute of a 1-0 win against Baylor.

The Bulldogs’ offense was a threat all night with 17 total shots and four on goal, but only one got through. Maddy Anderson recorded just one save in the shutout victory.

Mississippi State (1-0, 0-0) will return to action in Starkville on Sunday against Northwestern State. The game will be broadcasted on SEC Network+ at 1 p.m.

No games scheduled.

Women’s Soccer: No. 15 Mississippi State X, Baylor X

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On beating Texas in 2002, when asked if he regretted not hyping Kliff Kingsbury more: “I don’t even remember what I said. I hope whatever I said was cute and clever, and maybe even a tiny bit humorous. I hope it wasn’t mindless babble, and if it was, hopefully everyone will forget about it pretty quick.”