Cargill turkey feed mill celebrates 30 injury-free years
Cargill Turkey and Cooked Meats (CTCM) feed mill, located in Springdale, Ark, which furnishes feed for Cargill’s turkey business in this region, has operated 30 consecutive years, five days a week, 20 hours a day, without any employee lost time injuries.
“Cargill was built on a firm foundation of respect, integrity and commitment to health and safety,” said Shane Acosta, general manager for Cargill’s turkey operations in Northwest Arkansas, headquartered in Springdale. “Employee and workplace safety is one of our top priorities and the employees of the Springdale mill should take great pride in this tremendous achievement they have worked so hard to earn. We are also honoring a similar 22-year accomplishment by our hatchery team at Gentry, Ark.”
For the nearly 40 Cargill employees who work at the feed mill, each workweek is filled with activity focused on providing high quality, nutritious feed for tens-of-thousands of Cargill turkeys in the region. An average week for the feed mill consists of 100 hours of operation, with employees working in 10 hour shifts, two shifts daily, five days a week. In these 100 hours, Cargill employees produce, load and ship approximately 5.6 million pounds (2,800 tons) of feed, which is delivered to Cargill’s contract turkey farmers located throughout the region.
Each week, the mill receives the equivalent of approximately 110 truckloads of ingredients and ships an average of 112 truckloads of finished feed. The process of loading and unloading these feed ingredients and the finished product is labor intensive and involves handling rail cars, trucks and filling and drawing from large grain silos. This type of work requires a great deal of care and concentration to be accomplished safely each day. It is a direct reflection of the feed mill employees’ commitment to safety that more than 11,000 days have elapsed since the last lost time injury occurred.
Cargill entered the turkey business in the late 1960s, and currently CTCM encompasses 16 US facilities that include hatcheries, feed mills, harvesting and meat processing plants and a distribution center. In addition to live turkey production and processing, CTCM operates facilities that provide consumers with further processed and cooked meats. CTCM facilities are located in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Virginia, Nebraska and Minnesota, employ approximately 5,400 people and process an average of 1.07 billion pounds of turkey meat annually, making Cargill one of the leading turkey products companies in the US.
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