The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food

· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Michael Kramer
Audiobook
8 hr 29 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

On the production line in American packinghouses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Under pressure to increase supply, the supervisors of meat-processing plants have routinely accelerated the pace of conveyors, leading to inhumane conditions, increased accidents, and food of questionable and often dangerous quality. In The Chain, acclaimed journalist Ted Genoways uses the story of Hormel Foods and its most famous product, Spam, to probe the state of the meatpacking industry.



Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point. Along the way, he exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant labor.
On the production line in American packinghouses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Under pressure to increase supply, the supervisors of meat-processing plants have routinely accelerated the pace of conveyors, leading to inhumane conditions, increased accidents, and food of ques...

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About the author

Ted Genoways, an award-winning poet, journalist, and editor, is the author of Walt Whitman and the Civil War. He served as editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2003 to 2012, during which time the magazine won six National Magazine Awards. He is a winner of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. Ted lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his family.

Audiobook veteran Michael Kramer has recorded more than two hundred audiobooks for trade publishers and many more for the Library of Congress Talking Books program. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner and an Audie Award nominee, he earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award for his reading of Savages by Don Winslow.

Ted Genoways, an award-winning poet, journalist, and editor, is the author of Walt Whitman and the Civil War. He served as editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2003 to 2012, during which time the magazine won six National Magazine Awards. He is a winner of the James Aronson Award for Soci...

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