Packers Sanitation Services Inc. : When the Warning Signs Were There All Along
04/09/2026
•
5 mins read
Forced labor is often assumed to be a problem of distant supply chains. The case of Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) dismantles that assumption entirely.
PSSI was a leading U.S. industrial cleaning contractor, servicing major meatpacking plants and backed by a top-tier private equity firm. Yet between 2022 and 2024, it became the center of one of the most significant child labor scandals in the U.S., one that had been quietly signaling its risks for years. SESAMm's controversy monitoring platform captured those early signals long before regulators intervened.
The Scandal
In November 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor discovered that PSSI had employed minors as young as 13 in hazardous overnight roles across 13 locations in 8 states. A federal investigation confirmed 102 children had been illegally employed, many handling dangerous chemicals and machinery. Three years earlier, in 2019, PSSI had already been sued for wage violations. The signal was there. It went unheeded.
The Fallout
The consequences were swift. A $1.5 million DOL fine. Contract terminations by Cargill and JBS. A DHS trafficking investigation. A replaced CEO. By late 2024, PSSI had shut its corporate office entirely. Even the private equity owner, Blackstone, faced direct scrutiny from pension funds, a reminder that labor violations travel up the ownership chain.
The Lesson
Every warning sign in this case was publicly visible before the crisis broke out. Wage lawsuits, labor complaints, and media coverage are all available in the public domain. Real-time controversy monitoring can surface these signals early, giving companies and investors the chance to act before exposure becomes unavoidable.
Forced labor is not only a humanitarian crisis. It is a material risk that demands better data, earlier detection, and stronger accountability.
Download the full case study infographic to see the complete timeline of events and key takeaways
SESAMm is pleased to announce the appointment of Steven Carroll to its Advisory Board. Over a career spanning more than 25 years, Steven has built a uniquely broad perspective on financial data, having operated at a senior level across every major corner of the industry, from quant analytics and content to AI-powered research tools and global data platforms.
A Career at the Heart of Financial Data
Steven has seen financial data from every angle: quant analytics at StarMine, content and indices at Thomson Reuters, and AI-powered search at AlphaSense. At Refinitiv and then LSEG, he took on progressively broader remits, culminating in his role as Head of Customer Strategy and Execution, where he was responsible for go-to-market across Workspace, Data and Feeds, FTSE Russell, and Risk Intelligence and Analytics. Throughout, Steven's roles have sat at the intersection of product, marketing, and sales, spanning multiple geographies, including Australia, Singapore, the UK, and the United States.
Deep Roots in the Institutions and Workflows SESAMm Serves
Steven is a subject-matter expert on the content sets and workflows that underpin institutional investment and risk management, including fundamental data, estimates, broker research, ESG, sentiment, and credit analytics. He has also worked closely with the firms that consume this data, from private equity and asset managers to commercial banks and insurers, giving him a first-hand understanding of how they evaluate, adopt, and integrate new data and analytics tools into their processes.
Expanding SESAMm's Reach Across Global Financial Markets
Steven's appointment comes as SESAMm continues to expand its AI-powered risk intelligence platform and deepen its relationships with private equity firms, asset managers, commercial banks, insurers, and financial institutions globally. His perspective will provide valuable insight, bringing a practitioner's understanding of how financial data businesses grow and scale.
Steven is also the founder of CCAS (Carroll Consulting and Advisory Services), a London-based advisory practice supporting startups and established vendors across the information services ecosystem. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and the Institute of Consulting, a member of the Institute of Directors and the CFA Institute, and serves on the Board of Governors at Greenwich Waldorf School.
We're thrilled to welcome Steven to SESAMm's Advisory Board and look forward to working together as we continue advancing AI-powered risk intelligence for investment firms and corporations worldwide.
SESAMm is proud to announce the launch of our latest solution: TextReveal® ESG Alerts. TextReveal ESG Alerts identifies ESG risks1 and positive impact coverage2 in over 100 languages by tracking mentions of your entire portfolio across 20 billion historical articles with millions of new ones added daily in near real-time.
1 Inspired by SASB and other major standards. 2 Based on UN SDGs.
Why use TextReveal ESG Alerts for your portfolio
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings have become a conventional measure of a company’s risk against those business areas. They are also increasingly critical as legislation and stakeholders focus on sustainability, positive impact initiatives, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). So with the practice of ESG rating, investors have been able to use those scores to make decisions about their portfolios. Of course, investors are committed to a greener future, too.
Unfortunately, traditional ESG ratings come with challenges. For example, according to Andrew McLaughlin, a contributor to The Globe and Mail, many ESG rating providers are “popping up like dandelions,” and “each uses its own methodologies to rank and score publicly traded companies based on their purported environmental, social and governance risk and performance.” Further, you might have access to ratings, but they’re only updated once per quarter or once yearly.
With SESAMm’s TextReveal ESG Alerts, you can access consistent, timely daily data on five million public and private companies to better assess risks and receive early warnings.
Figure 1: In 2020, U.S. news sentiment falls ahead of the stock market in response to COVID-19 concerns.
The model can calculate sentiment for each company by analyzing the news of individual companies. It’s also possible to create a composite to measure the sentiment related to a stock index. The sentiment data also helps management and investor relations because it provides a quantitative means of understanding the extent to which investors are concerned about certain news about their company.
Verifying the results
Verification using Japanese has revealed that the timing of bottoming and ceiling of text sentiment precedes those of stock prices. The collaborating team compared the performance of:
A model that uses only orthodox financial and economic data as inputs
A model that considers NLP and financial and economic data, confirming that the latter could generate higher alpha
ESG controversy monitoring can alert you to potential risks before market-moving events occur. Illustrated: Tesla ESG scores for pollutants, ethical standards, discrimination, and environmental impact.
The TextReveal ESG Alerts edge
Broad coverage
Access five million private and public companies of all sizes, including micro-caps, to identify risks in over 100 languages.
Expertise
Leverage ninety pre-built yet taxonomy-adaptable ESG risk categories such as SASB standards, UN Global Compact, and UN SDG-based positive impact statistics coverage.
Transparency
Gain insights with deeper analysis, seeing specific articles driving your alerts.
Timeliness
View live web data for forward-looking scores and insights.
TextReveal ESG Alerts features
Because we trained them on a representative corpus selected from billions of articles from prestigious news organizations, local news, and discussion forums, our NLP tools can understand finance and interpret slang, misspellings, and textspeak.
Get an ESG and UN SDG dashboard view of your portfolio.
The best part is that you can receive alerts and monitor scores in the way that works best for you. ESG and UN SDG‐based positive impact statistics can be accessed and delivered via:
Email Alerts
CRM and cloud based integration
Live dashboards
API and data files
ESG studies
Get the SESAMm edge from TextReveal ESG Alerts
Save time vetting your current investments and evaluating new ones while providing higher quality, objective results compared with manual monitoring, black-box ratings, or self-reported questionnaires.
Reach out to a SESAMm representative for a personal demo today.
On 5 December in New York, SESAMm was selected to take part in The BIG Alternative Data Showcase Event, one of the major events focused on alternative data applied to the asset management industry. Organised by our partner Eagle Alpha, this very first step in the US market for SESAMm represented a unique opportunity: to bring our expertise and solutions to the biggest asset managers globally.
Since September, SESAMm’s business has been growing steadily. In addition to the ongoing discussions we have with several significant asset managers, two major groups have signed a contract with us: one of the top 5 asset managers in Japan that has more than $100 billion of assets under management; and one of the top 10 asset managers in France with more than $50 billion under management.
In addition to this great news, we recently signed partnerships with two major data providers in the USA, one of them with Eagle Alpha. Shortly after our agreement, from a list of 450 data vendors, Eagle Alpha selected 12 of them to be part of the BIG Alternative Data Showcase Event, SESAMm being the only French company chosen. This event in New York City represents the biggest one globally on alternative data applied to asset management. That was an opportunity for our company to present for the very first time L’Humeur des Marchés and our expertise in the United States.
Sponsored by Deloitte, Lowenstein Sandler, S&P Global Market Intelligence and CRUX, Eagle Alpha’s event showed us how unique and exceptional the US market is in terms of business opportunities for SESAMm. Gathering renown international hedge funds, investment banks but also major companies from other sectors with needs in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis, this event proved to be one of the most interesting and exciting we have attended so far.
Following this event, with the multiple contacts and leads for both partnerships and business contracts that have been gathered, our journey home only strengthens our intention to plan future business trips in the United States and our entry on this market.
Stay ahead with the latest in ESG and AI intelligence
Join our mailing list to receive new reports, event invites, and updates from SESAMm directly to your inbox.
.avif)
.png)