Meatpacking in America

I'm reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I just finished the chapter on the working conditions within meatpacking plants. It's insane how poor the conditions are that exist in these plants. Meatpacking plants have at least three times the death/injury rates for manufacturing jobs in the U.S. (the scary part is that these companies have been caught routinely lying about their injury rates, one company kept official records of injury rates to show inspectors and an unofficial copy for their own use; there was a 1000% difference in the numbers between the two, so the actual number is surely a lot higher.) Workers die and are injured in all sorts of gruesome accidents; there are beheadings, arms and legs ripped off, deep lacerations, getting body parts or even your whole body pulverized and ground up, etc. Only the most severe injuries are often reported, since they can't be covered up. If someone has an injury that is less obvious, the company will often refuse to give them worker's compensation. The conditions are so unsafe because the company is trying to process as many animals as possible and push the line speeds way beyond what workers can handle safely.

Why is it that PETA and other vegetarian activist groups don't draw more attention to this aspect of meat production? I've heard a lot about how horrible the animals have it, but this was really the first time I heard about how horrible the people who work in these plants have it. Is it because these groups just care about animals and not people? Do they think they deserve their fate for killing the animals? Or is it because the vast majority of the workers in these plants are immigrants, many of them here illegally? Perhaps they just don't think the American public would be sympathetic to illegals getting hurt and they feel it's more effective to focus on the poor cows.

What do you think?