The Chain, Ted Genoways
The Chain, Ted Genoways
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The Chain
Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food

Author: Ted Genoways

Narrator: Michael Kramer

Unabridged: 8 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/11/2014


Synopsis

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.

About Ted Genoways

Ted Genoways is an award-winning poet, journalist, and editor. He is the author of two books of poems and the nonfiction book Walt Whitman and the Civil War. He is also a contributing editor at Mother Jones and editor-at-large at OnEarth. His essays and poetry have appeared in the Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Harper's, the New Republic, Outside, and the Washington Post Book World. Ted is a winner of a National Press Club Award and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and he has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. He edited the Virginia Quarterly Review from 2003 to 2012, during which time the magazine won six National Magazine Awards. Ted lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Colleen

A thorough examination of a thoroughly depressing subject. The power that a corporation like Hormel has to make deleterious decisions that negatively impact individuals, animals, citizens, rivers, wildlife, and everything in between is shameful. For profit. For Spam.......more