Ted Genoways: The Ongoing Saga of the JBS Beef Plant
Food with Mark Bittman
Sweetness and Light
4.8 • 981 Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thousands of workers at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, one of the largest US meatpacking facilities, have gone on strike over alleged unfair labor practices—the first major strike at a US beef slaughterhouse in 40 years. We're revisiting our conversation with journalist Ted Genoways, who last year reported on allegations of human trafficking at the JBS plant: the viral TikTok video that started it all, the thousands of Haitian migrants in the crosshairs, and how JBS' HR department saw it as a positive thing.
Want to listen to Ted's reporting on Greeley? You can do that here: https://revealnews.org/podcast/immigrants-on-the-line/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Food with Mark Bitman. I'm Kate Bitman. Thanks for being here. We know how many of you are loyal listeners and we appreciate that so much. If you'd like to hear more from Mark and me and our small but mighty team, check us out on bitmanproject.com. When you subscribe there, you'll get access to our recipe database, which now has thousands |
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| 1:13.3 | Thank you. Earlier this month, thousands of workers at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, one of the largest meatpacking facilities, went on strike over alleged unfair labor practices. the first major strike at a U.S. beef slaughterhouse in 40 years. So what better time to revisit our conversation |
| 1:20.1 | with journalist Ted Genoese, who reported on JBS a year ago. JBS is the world's largest meat producer, with net revenue in 2024 of $76 billion, |
| 1:32.3 | and, unsurprisingly, it's historically relied on immigrant labor. The company was fairly recently |
| 1:39.9 | accused by its workers' union of deceptively luring Haitian refugees to work at its Greeley Colorado |
| 1:45.9 | facility, a practice described by the union as human trafficking. This is the story Ted Genoese reported |
| 1:53.1 | on for the investigative radio show, Reveal. Ted has been covering the meatpacking industry for more |
| 1:59.3 | than a decade. If you want to listen to his reveal reporting, we've got the link in today's show notes. |
| 2:05.2 | And now here we are in this episode from just about a year ago with Ted. |
| 2:10.5 | Ted, thanks so much for joining us on food. |
| 2:13.8 | Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. |
| 2:15.9 | Hi, Ted. |
| 2:16.8 | Hey. |
| 2:18.1 | Ted, you recently reported a story on the investigative radio show called Reveal about a meatpacking plan in Greeley, Colorado. |
| 2:27.5 | And I don't want to say anymore. |
| 2:29.3 | I'd like you to recount that briefly because it immediately caught our attention. |
| 2:33.8 | And obviously, that's why we wanted to have our attention, and obviously that's why |
| 2:34.8 | you wanted to have you on. Well, that's great. I appreciate that. So the story is, it's a kind of |
| 2:41.8 | complicated tale of, as you say, it's a JBS beef packing plant in Greeley, Colorado, and it's a |
... |
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