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Safety experts are sounding the alarm that severe cutbacks in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) – including a critical lack of inspectors and diminished enforcement capabilities – are creating an increasingly perilous environment for agricultural workers across the United States. This dire warning comes in the wake of a tragic incident in August 2025, where six farmworkers lost their lives at Prospect Valley Dairy in Keenesburg, Colorado, due to toxic gas exposure. The catastrophe underscores long-standing concerns about an underregulated industry now facing even weaker oversight under the current administration.
The Prospect Valley Dairy Tragedy: A Detailed Account
On August 20, 2025, an unimaginable horror unfolded at Prospect Valley Dairy, a large-scale dairy operation in Keenesburg, Colorado. The incident began when two workers ventured into an enclosed underground pump room to repair the manure management system. This critical infrastructure is designed to handle the immense volume of waste produced by thousands of cows, a daily output that can fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in less than a week. During their repair efforts, a pipe unexpectedly disconnected, releasing a torrent of manure water and, more lethally, hydrogen sulfide – a highly toxic gas generated by the decomposition of manure.
The two men were immediately overwhelmed by the gas. As they struggled, four additional workers, responding to the unfolding crisis and attempting to render aid, bravely entered the confined space. Tragically, they too were quickly overcome by the deadly fumes.
The gravity of the situation became apparent during a harrowing 45-minute 911 call reviewed by Colorado Public Radio. An EMT arriving on the scene quickly recognized the extreme danger. They reported to the operator that accessing the unconscious workers, trapped 12 feet deep in the pit, was impossible due to the overwhelming risk of gas exposure. The initial call for a rescue helicopter was soon rescinded, replaced by the somber request for a coroner, confirming the worst fears.
“It was terribly tragic and also completely preventable. It’s well known that manure pits are dangerous confined spaces,” stated Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary at OSHA and author of the workplace safety blog Confined Space. His words echo a widespread sentiment among safety advocates: such incidents are not unforeseen accidents but rather predictable outcomes of inadequate safety protocols in high-risk environments.
Almost a year after the tragedy, family members of four of the deceased have initiated a wrongful death lawsuit against Prospect Valley Dairy and HD Builders LLC, alleging that both entities were aware of a faulty manure-management system and that the fatalities were entirely avoidable. The lawsuit seeks damages under Colorado’s wrongful death statutes, bringing a legal challenge to the dairy’s operational safety. Civil Eats reported an inability to reach Arend Bos, the owner of Prospect Valley Dairy, for comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.
OSHA’s Shrinking Reach: The Regulatory Landscape
The incident at Prospect Valley Dairy serves as a stark illustration of the inherent dangers within the animal agriculture sector, a hazard exacerbated by what safety experts describe as a deliberate dismantling of worker protections. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), established in 1970 to ensure safe and healthy working conditions, is increasingly hampered by budget and staffing cuts, particularly under President Donald Trump’s second administration and its newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
A January 2025 report from the Office of Inspector General revealed a 13 percent drop in federal OSHA inspectors from February 2024 to June 2025. This reduction brings the total number of OSHA inspectors, including state-level personnel, to approximately 1,720 nationwide. These inspectors are tasked with overseeing the health and safety of an astounding 144 million workers across 11.6 million worksites in a vast array of industries. This translates to each inspector being responsible for the safety of roughly 84,000 workers.
This diminishing capacity has profound implications. The likelihood of a random inspection, or any inspection at all, has plummeted. Current estimates suggest it would take OSHA an astonishing 191 years to inspect every workplace under its jurisdiction just once. This figure represents a significant increase from the 165 years reported by Civil Eats in 2022, highlighting an accelerating decline in oversight capabilities. For most employers, particularly in less accessible sectors like agriculture, the prospect of ever seeing an OSHA inspector has become exceedingly remote.
Debbie Berkowitz, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and a former senior official at OSHA, noted the practical challenges. "Most of the time [OSHA inspectors are] looking at construction sites, because those are easier to inspect, less time consuming, and they’re also all around," she explained. "So, OSHA doesn’t have to travel hours to a farm." This geographical and logistical challenge further isolates agricultural operations from regulatory scrutiny.
Following the Prospect Valley Dairy incident, OSHA issued citations to both Prospect Ranch LLC (which operates as Prospect Valley Dairy) and High Plains Robotics, a division of Fiske, Inc., which provided maintenance services. HD Builders LLC, also present at the scene, received citations. The citations primarily focused on failures to protect workers from atmospheric hazards and insufficient training regarding toxins. "They have to educate workers about chemical hazards and the measures needed to protect them when working in and around manure. They didn’t do that," Berkowitz asserted, criticizing the inadequacy of the response given the severity of the outcome.
Legal Battles and Accountability Gaps
Despite the catastrophic loss of life, the penalties levied by OSHA have drawn criticism for being disproportionately low. Prospect Ranch LLC was initially proposed a fine of $132,406 by the Department of Labor but ultimately fined approximately $85,000 for six violations – a sum it is reportedly contesting. Jordan Barab expressed surprise that the violations were not classified as "willful," a designation applied when there is a clear disregard for worker safety or gross negligence. Such a classification, a step above "serious," could have resulted in individual penalties exceeding $150,000 per violation, significantly increasing the total fine.
A report by the policy research center Good Jobs First indicated that the first nine months of 2025 saw a 66 percent decrease in average penalties compared to the same period over the previous 17 years. Health and safety penalties dropped 47 percent, and enforcement cases declined 35 percent. This trend suggests that for many companies, non-compliance may be perceived as a more economically viable option, especially given the reduced likelihood of inspection and the diminished financial consequences of being caught.
In a February letter to Department of Labor officials, six Democratic U.S. Senators voiced their concerns, noting a 42 percent decrease in "willful violations" found during inspections in 2025 compared to 2024. The senators argued that this reduction "indicates that OSHA inspectors may be being encouraged to issue citations for lesser violations, allowing employers who commit serious safety violations to avoid facing proportional consequences." While Civil Eats could not independently verify the senators’ specific data point, the overall trend aligns with the broader narrative of weakened enforcement.
The Perilous Nature of Agricultural Work
Beyond the immediate tragedy, the broader context of agricultural work reveals an industry inherently fraught with danger. The animal agriculture industry, as highlighted in Civil Eats’ “Injured and Invisible” investigation, has long been a perilous workplace. Manure pit drownings and asphyxiation are disturbingly common fatalities, alongside dangers such as animal attacks, entanglement in heavy machinery, and suffocation in hay piles or grain bins.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), once a key player in worker health and safety research, has also seen its funding and research capabilities significantly curtailed. This loss means less proactive information and guidance on preventing hazards, further shifting OSHA towards a reactive stance rather than a preventative one, as Barab noted.
Adding to the complexity, farms with fewer than 10 employees remain exempt from OSHA inspections, enforcement, and penalties due to a budget rider first attached to OSHA’s appropriations budget in 1976. This rider, intended to protect small farms from what was seen as burdensome government oversight, effectively leaves a significant segment of the agricultural workforce with little to no federal protection.
The rationale behind this exemption, according to Debbie Berkowitz, lies in "the intense lobbying of the agricultural industry led by Big Ag." She asserts that neither Democratic nor Republican parties are willing to challenge this rider due to anticipated political backlash, despite its clear implications for worker safety. Will Lambek, a staff member at Vermont-based Migrant Justice, a grassroots organization fighting for economic justice and human rights, starkly summarized the situation: "We can’t say that we’ve seen deterioration because you can’t go lower than zero," referring to the complete absence of OSHA inspections he has observed on Vermont dairy farms.
Other Threats to Worker Safety: A Vulnerable Workforce
The challenges for agricultural workers extend beyond direct safety regulations. Many foreign-born farmworkers, some of whom are undocumented, face unique vulnerabilities. They often take grueling jobs to support their families, and their employment is frequently tied to their housing, meaning they often live on or adjacent to the farms where they work. "The workers are literally sleeping next to or right above the cows that they’re milking," Lambek explained. This creates a severe power imbalance where speaking up about unsafe conditions could result not only in job loss but also in homelessness.
The chilling effect of Trump-era immigration enforcement, including increased raids targeting farm and food production workers, further silences potential whistleblowers. "When workers speak up about abuses happening or urge employers to address chronic health and safety issues, they’re branded as troublemakers, and they’re run off the farm," Lambek elaborated. This climate of fear contributes to the severe underreporting of incidents. One analysis claims that over 80 percent of non-fatal injuries and illnesses on animal farms are not reported to OSHA, suggesting the official statistics significantly underestimate the true scope of the problem. Even with this underreporting, agriculture remains one of the most fatal industries in which to work.
Moreover, the structure of the agricultural industry itself is evolving in ways that may heighten worker risk. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data indicates a dramatic consolidation, with the number of farms housing 1,000 or more cows increasing by 60 percent from 2002 to 2022, while mid-sized operations have shrunk by 62 percent. The "myth of the small family farm" persists, but the reality is that most workers are employed on massive operations managing millions of pounds of manure. Prospect Valley Dairy, for example, handled the waste of over 6,000 cows, a scale that necessitates complex, potentially hazardous manure management systems. These increasingly crowded, pathogen-rich, and manure-laden environments raise the risk of injury from animals and the waste they produce.
"Big Ag Rules the Roost": Systemic Regulatory Gaps
The tragedy at Prospect Valley Dairy highlights not only the decline in enforcement but also fundamental gaps in agricultural worker protection standards. OSHA’s confined-space standard, which dictates crucial safety measures like atmospheric testing and buddy systems for workers entering enclosed spaces "not necessarily designed for people" but "large enough for workers to enter"—like the pump room at Prospect Valley Dairy—explicitly does not apply to agriculture.
"If you talk to any OSHA inspector who’s ever gone on a farm to do an inspection, the first thing they’ll tell you is we need more standards to cover agriculture," Berkowitz emphasized. While hundreds of standards govern general industry, only a handful apply to agriculture. This disparity, she contends, is a direct result of "Big Ag" lobbying efforts to prevent regulation, despite air quality being a common and deadly hazard in manure storage facilities.
Berkowitz believes the OSHA office in Denver handled the Prospect Valley case as best they could under existing constraints, acknowledging that "it must have broken their heart that they didn’t have more tools that they could use to hold these employers accountable for what happened." Their capacity is severely limited by record-low staffing and budget cuts, leaving them with "the lowest number of inspectors in the history of the agency to be able to protect workers from being killed or dying on the job."
Working for Change: A Roadmap for Reform
Despite the formidable challenges, advocacy groups are actively working to challenge the agricultural industry’s dominant influence over worker rights. In Vermont, Migrant Justice has pioneered the "Milk with Dignity" program, described by Will Lambek as a worker-driven initiative designed to "address systemic human rights violations and improve labor and housing conditions" in the dairy sector. This model, inspired by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, empowers workers to participate directly in ensuring their rights. However, such programs remain localized, with 80 percent of Vermont dairy workers still outside its protections.
True transformation, Lambek argues, requires federal intervention. He calls for more forceful federal enforcement of labor laws and the urgent closing of agricultural worker loopholes. Programs like Milk with Dignity, while effective, "are protecting workers’ rights in a way that federal enforcement has really never been able to do."
The roadmap to providing agricultural employees with robust protections is clear, according to Berkowitz: federal regulators at OSHA must extend the same safety standards and protections that apply to workers in other hazardous industries, such as slaughterhouses and factories, to the agricultural sector.
The year 2025 marked 55 years since OSHA was signed into law, yet the agency now faces its lowest staffing and inspector count in U.S. history. Agriculture, consistently one of the most fatal industries, remains one of the least regulated. With the ongoing dismantling of regulatory agencies, "it’s now going to get much more dire for ag workers," Berkowitz warned. "The Trump administration and Republicans are set on essentially emaciating the only worker protections workers have." The tragic deaths at Prospect Valley Dairy stand as a grim testament to the escalating crisis in farmworker safety, demanding immediate and comprehensive policy reforms.
