The company had always used a centralized approach to managing safety and health. Responsibility for such tasks as measurement, inspection, correction, and investigation was assigned to the safety manager, Joe Don Huttle. Huttle had an excellent record during his 20 years in the poultry-processing industry, with the last 5 spent at PPC. In fact, he was so well respected in the industry that his peers had elected him president of a statewide safety organization. This, as it turned out, is where PPC's troubles began.