Meat has been in the news a lot lately.

During this pandemic, we're seeing a nationwide meat shortage, and now it's affected.

Thousands of meatpacking workers across the nation have tested positive for COVID-19.

There are a lot of stories about meat packing plants shutting down.

One of the nation's biggest pork processing plants closed indefinitely.

And the chaos that that might bring.

Havoc in the meat supply chains.

But this is only a small part of the story.

The pandemic has exposed some problems with the way we get meat to people's plates,

but those problems existed long before 2020.

In some cases, they've been around for decades. and they go well beyond the meatpacking plants.

So that's why we decided to do a whole season on how the meat we eat affects us all.

I'm Dylan Matthews, Future Perfect Reporter, and your host for the last two seasons.

And I'm Sigal Samuel, also a Future Perfect Reporter and joining Dylan as co-host.

This season, we're traveling all up and down the meat supply chain.

We'll talk about the problems with meat packing plants and what they mean for workers' health.

We've got to come.

Call County 911. What's in your emergency?

A man has tail off of a killer and his leg is cut out. But we'll also talk about the welfare of animals.

They're jammed into these cages and they're always pecking at each other because of the incredible

stress they're under. And so what they do is they take away their beaks.

We'll look into what our current system of meat production means for people who live near these huge meat facilities.

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