Life on the fast line

Future Perfect

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Tech News, News

4.5 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2020

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 [email protected]. Subscribe to Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes of the latest season each week. This podcast is made possible thanks to support from Animal Charity Evaluators. They research and promote the most effective ways to help animals. 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

Transcript

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0:00.0	avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start.
0:04.6	Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.
0:07.6	Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin,
0:10.9	or what that clunking sound from your dryer is.
0:13.9	With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.
0:16.6	You just have to hire one.
0:17.6	You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.
0:23.7	Download today.
0:25.4	Jill Maurer never thought she'd become a meat inspector.
0:28.5	Oh, my goodness.
0:29.6	You know, that's the thing we joke about the most, that we didn't grow up as young people saying,
0:33.7	I want to work in the packing house.
0:34.7	That's the best thing ever.
0:35.8	But in the early 90s, after she finished college, Joe was trying to figure out her future.
0:41.2	And the job I was at was rather dead end. And my dad was not happy. I was not using my degree.
0:48.7	So the guy I was dating at the time, his uncle was a federal inspector in Wisconsin.
0:56.1	The uncle was pressuring her boyfriend to follow in his footsteps and inspect me.
1:00.0	Of course, my dad said, I think you're going to do it too.
1:03.6	So Jill applied, took a long test, and then she went back to work at her dead-end job.
1:09.2	And then one day, sometime after, she got a phone call from someone at the USDA regional office.
1:14.7	And she goes, we have a job in Dakota C. Nebraska, do you want it? Yes or no?
1:18.7	And I said, uh, what?
	...

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