Life on the fast line

Workers in meatpacking plants already process our pigs and beef and chickens extremely fast, but recently, there’s been a push to make the meatpacking factory line move even faster. Isaac Arnsdorf, a ProPublica reporter, takes us deep into his reporting on why that would be extremely dangerous for workers’ health. Then Jill Mauer, a federal meat inspector, explains why she’s worried that the changes in inspections necessary to make these faster line speeds possible could endanger us all. Further listening and reading: We based the first half of this episode on reporting in Isaac Arnsdorf’s ProPublica piece on changing line speeds. For more on changing line speeds, there are great background pieces from the New York Times’s Julie Creswell and the Washington Post’s Kimberly Kindi. Jill’s full NBC interview, which we excerpted in the episode The Food Integrity Campaign within the Government Accountability Project pulled together this report with affidavits from federal inspectors in pilot plants. We always want to hear from you! Please send comments and questions to futureperfect@vox.com.

You can listen to Life on the fast line online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Life on the fast line is an episode from Future Perfect by Vox Media Podcast Network.

This episode is 25:06 long.

This episode was published on Oct 7, 2020.

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