Recently the US Dept. of Agriculture gave the meat industry carte blanche to cause more brutality for animals—it announced a plan to increase slaughter line speeds at pork and poultry plants, meaning that the expeditious, sloppy and dangerous process of turning animals into consumer goods will become even more ghastly.

Plants are currently permitted to kill 140 birds per minute (over two birds per second) and 1,106 pigs per hour (one pig every 2.5 seconds). Faster line speeds will mean more mistakes and greater suffering.

Now there’s even more reason to avoid that Easter Sunday ham like the plague. It’s time for families to stop participating in the tradition completely unfettered by the misery they’re helping cause.

You know it’s bad when the announcement is being celebrated by groups like the National Chicken Council and the Meat Institute, which represent some of the nation’s biggest meatpackers. “We appreciate [USDA] wasting no time to support innovation in our industry,” said Meat Institute’s CEO Julie Anna Potts in a statement.

With this move, it’s clear that the USDA is cozying up to the greedy, morally corrupt meat industry.

The reckless decision will also subject workers to more grueling conditions. Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a group which represents more than 15,000 poultry workers, is concerned by the plans. “Increased line speeds will hurt workers—it’s not a maybe, it’s a definite,” he said in a statement.

Even under the current caps on line speeds, meatpacking and poultry companies are consistently found to be among the most dangerous manufacturing industries, and among the most dangerous industries in general.

Take Tyson Foods, for instance, which has 33% more employees than Ford but reported six times the number of severe injuries over a seven year span. JBS/ Pilgrim’s Pride, another poultry and pork manufacturer, had slightly fewer workers than Ford, yet reported four times the number of severe injuries over the same span of time.

The slaughterhouse workforce is an already vulnerable group. There are rampant reports of wage theft, and even reports of poultry workers being denied breaks and  being forced to wear diapers while on the line.

Not to mention it’s estimated that anywhere between 30-50% of the slaughterhouse workforce is comprised of undocumented immigrants. Additionally plants owned by Tyson, JBS and Cargill have been propped up by child labor.

Such a consistent clerical error is no simple mistake—deception, ignorance and exploitation are all baked into the meat industry’s ethos. The companies knew they employed kids, and didn’t care. All they see is dollar signs.

Long being a pursuant of faster line speeds, the USDA commissioned studies to compare plants operating at current line speeds to those operating at increased speeds, in attempts to show that faster slaughters were indeed safe. The findings were stark, and not what they were hoping for. Particularly alarming is the fact that 81% of workers at poultry plants and 46% at pork plants are at high risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders. The studies found a correlation between risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders and the given employee’s “workload,” or the number of animals they slaughtered per minute. When an employee’s workload became too quick, they were more likely to get injured.

Despite this obvious exploitation of human and non-human animals, the USDA is still bending the knee to the meat industry. We’re not surprised that the regulatory agency is beholden to the meat industry—but the public doesn’t have to be.

Be vegan.