Upton Sinclair shocked the American public with his 1906 novel The Jungle which exposed the poor working conditions and the mistreatment of immigrant workers in Chicago’s slaughterhouses. Not much has changed since then.

Ted Genoways, the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review and contributing editor of Mother Jones, has written a muckraking work on Hormel Foods, pork, and agribusiness. The author spent four years talking to line workers, union leaders, farmers, scientists, local politicians, activists, and labor historians about how the acceleration of the meatpacking industry has had dire effects on food quality and worker safety and has resulted in widespread animal abuse.

The villains in this scenario are greed and speed. Hormel Foods has achieved great success with the global demand for its product Spam. In meatpacking plants the speed of processing is set by a chain conveyor system. In 2002, the production line was running 900 hogs per hour and by 2007, it was running 1,350 hogs per hour. The result: everyone is working faster and mistakes happen with workers losing limbs and fecal matter on the hog’s bodies passing by undetected. No wonder the company has been hiring undocumented, illegal immigrants to labor in the packinghouses.

To make matters worse, the practices of agribusinesses are regulated but enforcement is lax. Hopefully, Genoway’s criticism of the industry will serve as a catalyst to the drastic changes needed in the food industry!