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.

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Featuring: Isaac Arnsdorf (@iarnsdorf), reporter, ProPublica Host: Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox More to explore: Follow all of Future Perfect’s reporting on the Future of Meat. Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Follow Us: Vox.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Release date

Lydbog: 7. oktober 2020