Tom Philpott: The Human Cost of Meatpacking

Species Unite

“People in the animal welfare world, I think, should broaden their purview to the human parts of it and sort of work in coalition. Like if you can really expose the labor conditions, you're weakening the industry, and if you can increase labor regulations, if you can make it to where workers don't routinely get repetitive stress injuries and they're not breathing in harsh chemicals, and if you slow the kill line down, that hits their profits and you are weakening the industry. And, also remember, this industry doesn't just slaughter billions of animals a year, it also makes life hell for the people who work in it. Expand your level of solidarity to those people.” – Tom Philpott

This is the third episode in a special for part series, where we go deep into the food system with some of the brightest minds at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. In this episode, we dive into one of the many hidden and hideous aspects of our food system: the exploitation of workers in industrial meat production.

Tom Philpott is a senior research associate at the Center. He joined in 2022 after a distinguished three-decade career in journalism, reporting on the injustices and ecological ramifications of the industrial food system. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Perilous Bounty.

I asked Tom to shed some light on the grueling conditions faced by meatpacking workers, from

dangerous line spades to repetitive injuries and the shocking lack of basic protections, and even though much of this was exposed during the covid 19 pandemic, to explain how it’s all still happening.

Tom also hosts the Center for a Livable Future’s podcast, it’s called Unconfined. It’s really good. Take a listen to learn a whole lot more about the impacts of food animal production.

Links

Center for a Livable Future: https://clf.jhsph.edu/

Tom Philpott: https://www.tomphilpott.net/

Perilous Bounty: https://bookshop.org/p/books/perilous-bounty-the-looming-collapse-of-american-farming-and-how-we-can-prevent-it-tom-philpott/8555300?ean=9781635578454&gclid=Cj0KCQjw48OaBhDWARIsAMd966DtJTjYQl6nh5J9Gk9ib9f3SXgKnCfTwujd-YMhRK-UC1X-ihdAiyIaAsm3EALw_wcB

Unconfined Podcast: https://clf.jhsph.edu/unconfined-podcast