Life on the fast line

Future Perfect

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.

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Featuring:

Isaac Arnsdorf (@iarnsdorf), reporter, ProPublica

Host:

Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

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