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

by Ted Genoways

A powerful and important work of investigative journalism that explores the runaway growth of the American meatpacking industry and its dangerous consequences.

On the production line in American packinghouses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Every year, the chain conveyors that set the pace of slaughter have continually accelerated to keep up with America's growing appetite for processed meat. Acclaimed journalist Ted Genoways uses the story of Hormel Foods and soaring recession-era demand for its most famous product, Spam, to probe the state of the meatpacking industry, including the expansion of agribusiness and the effects of immigrant labor on Middle America.

Genoways interviewed scores of industry line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists. He reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point and exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant workers.

The narrative moves across the heartland, from Minnesota, to witness the cut-and-kill operation; to Iowa, to observe breeding and farrowing in massive hog barns; to Nebraska, to see the tense town hall meetings and broken windows caused by the arrival of Hispanic workers; and back to Minnesota, where political refugees from Burma give the workforce the power it needs to fight back.

A work of brilliant reporting, The Chain is a mesmerizing story and an urgent warning about the hidden cost of the food we eat.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Animals, Business, Audiobook, Science, History

320 pages, Hardcover

Published October 14, 2014

About the author

Ted Genoways is an acclaimed journalist and author of The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food. A contributing editor at Mother Jones, the New Republic, and Pacific Standard, he is the winner of a National Press Club Award and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and is a two-time James Beard Foundation Award finalist. He has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. A fourth-generation Nebraskan, Genoways lives outside Lincoln with his wife, Mary Anne Andrei, and their son.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recipe for an unappealing pork product: you take a scoop of Silent Spring, a scoop of The Jungle and a scoop illegal immigration covered in the extra fat brought in to match Spam's original recipe and sprinkled with severely ill blue babies.

[Kezia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review on our blog, and am opting not to do that out of respect for Genoways' journalistic work. Why? Because animal advocates can't help but notice a glaring omission: the entire book contains only a few scant paragraphs about the treatment of animals in the modern agricultural system. Having said that, at least he does not make the naive mistake of suggesting that agribusiness cares more about their units of production than their workers or members of the communities they leech off of. He even seems to sympathize with the criminal animal abusers who are caught thanks to an undercover investigation.

It's mystifying that an otherwise important book like this makes such an obvious blunder. Yes, the working conditions are shameful. Yes, public health is at risk. But the elephant in the room is...a pig. The book has a bad case of the "absent referent" that Carol J. Adams speaks of, or a pronoun with a missing antecedent. Had Genoways extended the same journalistic insight and research to the animal link in the chain as he's done on the human and environmental links, we'd have a great addition to the shelf of nonfiction and documentaries about the food system. Had he extended even half of the same insight, even. Of all the sources in the book, only one environmental inspector in Iowa seems at all troubled by the intensive confinement systems used in factory farms.

Other than noting that Spam has become more popular as the economy went south, and was served to members of the military, Genoways rarely fingers the true culprit in the rise and rise of industrial agriculture: our unceasing appetite for animal products. (Pig meat is the third most popular meat in the U.S.) Likewise the book is short on solutions to the problem, perhaps because the obvious solution - stop eating animals - is so unpalatable to Americans. Even the smart ones who buy books.

Because Genoways won't tell you, I guess I have to: pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive, social animals. They are smarter than the pets we love on at home. Pigs can learn human words and phrases, solve problems, play computer games, and perform many other remarkable acts requiring complex cognitive processing. They are self-aware and recognize themselves in mirrors.

Pigs explore their environment and in natural settings roam long distances. They thrive on physical contact, play with, form affectionate bonds with, and vocalize with each other. When given the choice, they keep their living spaces clean, and create separate areas for eating, sleeping, and eliminating.

Yet we mutilate them, cripple them, confine them in cages so small they can’t even turn around for nearly their entire lives, and literally drive them insane, to say nothing of the transport and slaughter process. And with that, now you know more about pigs than you'll learn in this book.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure that Ted Genoways's The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food was the best book I could have chosen to start winter break with. Probably should have started with something a little lighter. Anyway, this was certainly an informative read. Genoways's book examines multiple "chains" connected to the hog slaughtering industry. There is, of course, the chain of workers at the meatpacking factories, where hogs are literally deconstructed. Then there's the chain inside *that* chain -- Genoways spends some time examining the line of workers dedicated to dealing only with hog heads/faces. But there are other chains, too: the chain from piglet to hog; the chain from family farming to agribusiness or factory farming or corporate farming (insert any number of synonyms, really); the chain between hog and consumer; the chain between big business and the environment.

Genoways does a nice job of making clear the consequences of America's collective choice to demand cheap meat. Doing so effects worker health, environmental health, and community health. The author takes some time examining all three in turn. The point, though, is quite simple: in demanding cheap meat, we as consumers make sacrifices that are perhaps obfuscated and unclear.

Books like this, then, essentially beg much larger questions about how we want to structure our society, for in consuming thoughtlessly, we sacrifice a lot. We sacrifice the dignity of workers who barely survive doing monotonous and dangerous work. These workers are often treated like replaceable cogs (because, really, they are in this kind of capitalistic system). We sacrifice the environment in a number of ways, too. Raising hundreds of pigs in tight spaces is unnatural. Pig sewage in Iowa alone is somewhere in the billions of gallons per year. This waste is often contained then passed off as fertilizer, but the high level of nitrates in that fertilizer have proven to make drinking water dangerous for many communities. Our health is at risk in other ways, too. The demand for cheap meat means few regulations, so there's always the risk of contaminated meat. The use of antibiotics threatens to create superbugs that are resistant to modern medicine. Finally, the demand for cheap labor often creates harmful ethnic divisions within small towns; as wages drop, as unions have disintegrated, as the work becomes increasingly unskilled, more and more immigrants find themselves living in rural places, taking jobs that at one point in time could provide a living for a family.

So yes, the book is informative. At the same time, I have to admit that I've read more engrossing nonfiction before. There's an important message here, one that I agree with politically, but I can't say that I loved reading The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food. One final critique, and it's a critique I'm glad another reviewer at the top of the reviews page has made: there's very little here about the welfare of the animals. There is a chapter or two that discuss mistreatment at specific plants, but those chapters are also very concerned with corollary issues and telling the narrative of PETA undercover workers. For a book that examines the various chains related to factory farming hogs, more time really could have been dedicated examining the lives of the hogs. I'm not saying the other chains aren't important and should have received less attention; rather, I'm merely suggesting that if we're looking to create more ethical systems of commerce, we also need to focus on the product -- the pig.

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this book would explore the social justice issues around Big Meat, and I was hoping that would include justice for non-human animals. Halfway through, I seemed to have already passed the chapters dealing with inhumane treatment, and it became pretty clear that this author is only appalled by a factory killing 13,000 pigs a day in that it is unsafe for workers and consumers; as long as no one is actually beating or sodomizing the pigs, he seems more-or-less OK with the pigs themselves.

I have all compassion for the workers, both American-born and immigrant, and am grateful that their story is being told, and I greatly appreciated the paragraph that found compassion even for abusers, caught up in the system themselves. From other reviews, however, it seems as though I am justified in putting down the book, that there will be not even a passing thought given to asking whether the reason this system isn't working isn't that it's big and fast, but that it's inherently, *inescapably* violent.

For example, the author indicates understanding that, when you have to move a mother that has been immobilized in a cage no larger than herself for months, and she finds it difficult or painful to walk and doesn't want to, you have to make her, and that probably means hurting her. He seems satisfied that as a result of being caught abusing pigs while moving them, the business decided to move pigs less. So... the solution to crippling animals by not allowing them to move is: to keep them from moving even more. What he doesn't mention is that, on top of the obvious cruelty of immobilizing an animal even longer, the pigs do have to move at least once, to the truck and off the truck to slaughter, and that is where a lot of abuse happens, for exactly the same reason: crippled, terrified pigs. But he never makes the connection that we have another choice.

I didn't expect this to be an animal rights book, but there was no acknowledgement of this choice, and the omission was glaring. This author is subtle, and often seems to let the facts speak for themselves rather than editorializing, but while you can often infer his discomfort with certain aspects such as racism, there is no hint given that he is not 100% comfortable with the killing.

Violence is arguably never useful, and in this case, it's so unnecessary, so transparently frivolous: Spam. I was hoping that a compassionate author would make this connection, and my disappointment is why I didn't like the book.

[Etienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a bit all over the place, but interesting, depressing but interesting! It cover every aspect of what is wrong with the food chain, more precisely the pork industry in the US. From big company, to illegal immigrant workers, bad working conditions, animal cruelty, bad legislation, pollution, etc. There is a lot in it, but like I said, a bit all over the place, meaning that it touch a lot of thing, but could have dig deeper if it was more focus and I also find it to be lacking some organization from chapter to chapter going from one subject to another then back. Not perfect, but definitely worth reading! We all eat so we should take way more interest on where our food is made and how!

[Weiwei Chan]

this shit is depressing af

[Donna]

a really important book. a commendable book. hard to read for the obvious reasons. i picked it up and put it down a few times, and this made it also hard to read because one needs to remember acronyms and the names of the players. Context helps to place them, but a little glossary of the names and people wouldn't hurt.

Pig meat was one of the few meats I liked to eat. Yes, that's now in the past tense. I can't see ham or bacon now without getting a little queasy. Genoways quotes Sinclair's saying that "the Jungle" aimed for people's hearts but hit their stomachs, but Genoways has linked the stomach and heart of this reader, anyway.

[Damon Glassmoyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent expose of the real costs - to health, environment, and society - of mass production of pork products. You will rethink your appetite for Spam. The author keeps multiple story lines going, so you may want to keep a notebook handy to track the people and agencies, but it's worth the extra effort.

[kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is book is, quite frankly, some of the finest journalism I've ever read. I got the audio version of this and I'm glad that I did. Although the information is good and extremely well written, it is quite dense and requires a lot of thought processing to get through. It took me over a month to finish this, which, considering the subject matter, is quite appropriate.

"The Chain" is about the meat industry, in particular, the production of a special meat we're all familiar with: Spam. Author Ted Genoways focuses on several 'chains' (social, economic, environmental) that go back to the Hormel Corporation's production of Spam, all of which have adverse effects for all involved. He discusses the mostly Hispanic workforce at Hormel's factories, which work on large assembly lines slaughtering pigs and processing their meat. Many of these workers are sickened, maimed, and abused by the production process, which offer little money and no legal assistance when things go wrong (which they do, quite often). Genoways also talks about the real cost of cheap meat--environmental pollution, animal abuse, and xenophobic communities wishing to rid themselves of the "plague" of undocumented workers. Yet it is undocumented workers that make companies like Hormel possible. Hispanic workers, they figure, are willing to work for low wages and unlikely to unionize. It is a cycle of abuse that place these workers in the most vulnerable position in society with absolutely no voice in what occurs in their workplace.

Hormel Corporation has also steadily fought unionization, inspections to their factories, restriction on the speed of their production (the faster production goes, more accidents happen), and attempted to silence whistle-blowers and any kind of reporting that question their practices. There are also very detailed descriptions of straight up filth and animal abuse. If you have never questioned your consumption of pork before, you probably will after you read this.

This book is not for the faint hearted. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who isn't afraid to delve into gritty details of the meat industry, or who just like good journalism.

4.5 stars.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Chain looks at the industrial food industry through the lens of Hormel - one of the largest pork producers in the world. Genoways not only looks at the horrific CAFO system for "raising" hogs for meat, but also how companies like Hormel corner the market for themselves through vertical integration (they own ALL aspects of the industry - the hogs, the feed, the slaughterhouses, the food processing plants, etc.). Besides the horrible, yet blessedly short, lives of the hogs, the worst part is how terribly the workers are treated. These companies needs scores of low-wage, un-skilled labor, so they look to the illegal immigrant population. These people, of course not all here illegally, are just trying to make a living, but usually end up with severe long-term health problems even after only a few months in this type of environment. What's even more enraging is that these companies often work with ICE to "give" them illegal employees over certain periods of time instead of having sweeping raids where half or more of their employees would be arrested and deported, yet these companies are never prosecuted or punished for continuing to hire illegals all the time - they don't have any intention of ever stopping. Unfortunately all these corporations care about is making more money - to the physical and emotional harm of the animals raised and killed for these products, the workers who do all the dirty work, and the communities affected by the CAFOs and factories. While a hard and sad book, it's another window into the horrible world of industrial farming. The ONLY answer to this is to support your local farmer and opt out of this terrible system.

Here are some quotes I liked:

"Only at the end of the checkup did Dyck explain to Garcia that there was an 'epidemic of neuropathy' that was affecting QPP [Quality Pork Processors, Inc.] workers - a newly discovered form of demyelinating polyradiculoneuropahty. After careful study, medical investigators had unanimously concluded that inhaling aerosolized brains had caused workers' immune systems to produce antibodies. Because porcine and human neurological cells are so similar, the antibodies didn't recognize when the foreign cells had been eliminated. Even when Garcia's body had eliminated all the hog tissue he had inhaled, Dyck explained, the antibodies kept fighting the infection, destroying Garcia's own nerve cells. The explanation made sense, except that, according to company officials, QPP had been blowing brains, off and on, for more than a decade. So why did workers fall ill now and not earlier? The answer offered by the Mayo Clinic is complex but boils down to one key change: increased line speed...And the longer hours worked in 2007 had, quite simply, upped workers' exposure." (p. 50-51)

"'It's absurd,' said Amanda Hitt at the Government Accountability Project. She told me that activist videos were akin to airplane black-box recorders - evidence for investigators to deconstruct and find wrongdoing. Ag gag laws, as they're known, don't just interfere with workers blowing the whistle on animal abuse. 'You are also stopping environmental whistle-blowing; you are also stopping workers' rights whistle-blowing.' In short, 'you have given power to the industry to completely self-regulate,' That should 'scare the pants off' of consumers concerned about where their food comes from. 'It's the consumers's right to know, but also the employee's right to tell. You gotta have both.' She said she couldn't believe that an industry that had been so regularly recorded breaking the law 'would have the audacity to come to any state legislative body and say, 'Hey, we're sick of getting caught doing crimes. Could you do us a favor and criminalize catching us?'" (p. 138-9)

"To me, the hog industry's vigilance against external pathogens seemed strangely at odds with their out-of-hand dismissals of concerns about their facilities' effects on human health." (p. 194)

"But this modern method of raising hogs is the farthest thing from natural; in fact, it is only made possible by massive amounts of antibiotics - used to prevent illness, to promote growth, and to increase fertility in ever increasing dosages as bacteria develop resistance and mutate into new, stronger strains. Many medical researchers and public health advocates now caution the widespread use of antibiotics has grown reckless and potentially dangerous." (p. 196)

"The team gathered the records of more than a thousand patients from rural Iowa who had been admitted to the Iowa Veterans' Affairs Hospital with respiratory complaints in 2010 and 2011. In all, they found 119 of the patients were suffering from MRSA. The rate in itself was distressingly high, but the greatest shock came when the home addresses for those patients were overlaid onto the Iowa's DNR's [Dept. of Natural Resources] map of CAFOs. The overwhelming number of patients with MRSA lived within one mile of a hog confinement. They were three times more likely to have the antibiotic-resistant bacteria than other residents of rural Iowa - and nearly ten times more likely than someone living in an urban area. The researchers were unable to say exactly how MRSA was making the jump from the confined hogs to the workers in the barns and the nearby residents, but they noted that manure from CAFOs is typically spread as fertilizer on the corn and soybean fields surrounding the barns. 'MRSA can be aerosolized from this manure to human food or water sources,' they concluded. 'The increasing populations of swine raised in densely populated CAFOs and exposed to antibiotics presents opportunities for drug-resistant pathogens to be transmitted among human populations.'"(p. 204-5)

"...the impact [of CAFO hog production] on Iowa's waterways has been almost too massive to comprehend. Of ninety test stations established across the state, only two now rate water quality as good. None rate as excellent. The Raccoon River and Des Moines River watersheds, which together supply most of the drinking water for the city of Des Moines and converge just east of the capital, have the highest and second-highest nitrate loads of the forty-two major tributaries to the Mississippi River. The Iowa DNR [Dept. of Natural Resources] estimates that the level of E. coli in the Raccoon River needs to be reduced by 99 percent." (p. 210)

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Food processing, animal treatment, rights of workers, and consumerism: all of these are addressed, challenged, exposed, and ultimately troubling. It would be too easy to make this a wake-up call about one company (in this case, Hormel). Instead, this is a full-blowing siren that demands awareness. One month ago I did not know about one company as clearly (and graphically) as a do now. What other businesses do I not know about? To what extent do I self-impose my ignorance for my own comfort? Admittedly, I tend to make decisions for my own convenience. I read this for an academic Common Read, and I remembered first reading _The Jungle_ years ago and actively changing my behaviors and choices. I'm now intrigued to learn the perceptions of others, especially students.

[Scot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, if I weren't already a plant-based eater, I'd make sure that I never bought any meat from a factory. I mean, I "knew" that already. But now I know it. And I learned that Hormel with the accent on the end was a corporate move. The original Hormel guy pronounced his name to rhyme with "normal."

That's some nice trivia to toss around at a party while you're eating canapés...until you look down and wonder where the meat on top of the puff pastry came from. Ew.

[Wendi Lau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I want to eat SPAM any more, or any Hormel products. Processing 19,000 hogs a day is definitely too many for food safety. Yuck. Good narratives about the people who work in the plants too.

[Chloe Megaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good… this is a crazy industry… definitely will not be eating pork for a while

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredibly intense, yet highly readable. Regardless of whether or not an individual eats pork, it is imperative that people read this book. In many ways, the foundation of the U.S. is being irrevocably damaged.

The store shortages of meat in the early days of Covid make sense now. Also, President Trump’s speeding up of slaughterhouse/meat packing lines are unbelievably irresponsible.

Read this book.

[Damian Sowa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. The author clearly has a vendetta against Hormel. I was truly hoping to hear more about the environmental & animal welfare issues surrounding the meat industry. Instead his book reads more like a screed about unions and immigration law. Unsatisfying.

[John Yunker]

The Chain picks up where The Jungle leaves off

The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food, by Ted Genoways, is an important work of reporting. Based on years of interviews and tireless research, the book spans the length of our food system, focused largely on Hormel Foods, the makers of Spam. It covers the tragically interconnected plight of the workers and of the animals.

Genoways cites The Jungle throughout this book, and for good reason. We’d certainly like to believe The Jungle brought attention to issues that have since been solved.

But these problems have not been solved. If anything they are worse.

Worse because there are so more many animals being killed today, animals who now never set foot on ground or see the light of day. And the workers are treated as badly now as they were then, losing fingers, becoming horribly diseased. Worse because so many of these workers, as undocumented workers, have so few rights, and as a result, are powerless to speak up.

Worse because we should know better now. We have laws now that are intended to protect humans and, to limited extent, the animals. Laws that are overlooked or ignored because the companies are firmly in charge of their own regulations. And the small towns that could pressure these companies to act like better citizens are terrified daily of watching the companies move to some other jobs-starved region.

In reading this book you learn:

Slaughterhouses keep accelerating the lines of production, to speeds that are frighteningly unsustainable — that is, if you want to ensure food safety and worker safety. One plant slaughters 10,000 hogs a day, a number once seemed impossible.
But do the workers get bonuses for this breakneck production? Of course not. They get sick. And the stories of human suffering in this book makes me wonder how the company’s executives sleep at night. Our desire for cheap meat has very real human costs.
Worse, the unions that once protected these workers have been largely made irrelevant. The companies prey on undocumented workers to keep wages low.
The water supplies around these plants are becoming so polluted that people now need to drink bottled water. There was once a time you’d travel to a third-world country and be wary of drinking the water. Now, we’ve created this experience across growing regions of the United States.
The numerous antibiotics and hormones injected into the animals are most certainly entering our bodies.
Perhaps slaughterhouses should be located in the hearts of major cities where we could all watch the animals being herded up the ramps with electric prods, instead of located in small towns that politicians will sell their souls to keep what few jobs they have left from going away. And where, now, so many states have enacted laws to prevent journalists or activists from photographing the animals or the workers.

It’s not hard to feel helpless and deeply upset reading this book. Because the corruption at the top levels of state and federal governments is so entrenched. This, by the way, is not a Democratic or Republic problem — neither party particularly cares for animals or the people who work on the lines.

But the fact is, there is one way to change the world.

Stop eating animals.

Genoways does not prescribe solutions in his book, but on his website he does suggest eating less meat.

And I will add that as someone who doesn’t eat meat, the meat substitutes avaiable these days are amazing. So are the fake cheeses. And these products don’t contain cholesterol or antibiotics. And they aren’t tainted with the horror that surrounds the meat industry.

Just as demand created the meat industry, demand for fake meat will one day create an entirely new industry, one that is far better for people, animals, and this planet.

The Jungle isn’t over. It’s still happening.

NOTE: This review first appeared on EcoLit Books:
http://www.ecolitbooks.com

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid coverage of several intertwining strains — the meatpacking world in general, and very much, and specifically, Hormel; labor in that world; cutting of federal regulatory oversight, which led to line speedups and more unsafe work, as well as more unsafe food; illegal immigrant labor to do this cost-cut, unsafe work; and Big Ag to provide a new flood of hogs to meet the ravenous maw of Hormel, even as it worked to get hog farmers to standardize hog size through selective breeding, to make its lines run even faster.

Of course, Hormel's No. 1 product is Spam, which is a barometer of some sort of overall middle and lower class economic health in America. (Sales remain booming, after the theoretical end of the Great Recession, and those "engineered" hogs are so lean that Hormel has to buy scraps from other packers to meet — but not meat, just fat :) — the demand.)

There's a broader picture, too. And, that's the relative lack of sympathy of non-packer workers in smaller, packer-centric towns. (Neither Fremont, Nebraska, nor Austin, Minnesota, Hormel's main sites, are that big.) The rest of the community didn't prepare itself for the reverse ripple effect when those wages started being cut; all that happened was large chunks of both cities turned against the Latino illegal immigrants filling ever more of the jobs.

One three-starrer gets a bit snooty, claiming that Genoways didn't focus enough on animal cruelty. Excuse me? Genoways spends parts or all of more than two dozen pages on this, including details of two undercover operations at CAFOs.

Rather, if there is anything to be dinged, I'd say he could have done more work looking at how Hormel might do some "recruiting" on the south side of the U.S. border, and have had some data on Presidential and Congressional voting patters in and around both towns, to lay out the hypocrisy factor more.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There’s nothing more political than food” – Anthony Bourdain

In my quixotic journey to learn more about where my food comes from which will surely end with a diet consisting of nothing that casts a shadow, I picked up Ted Genoways’ The Chain. I was previously vaguely aware of Genoways as a liberal journalist who focused on the intersection of farming, immigration, and environment, and I figured The Chain would hold up as The Jungle for the 21st Century that everyone seemed to think it was. And while there is quite a lot of references to Sinclair and plenty of gory accidents on the processing line, I was surprised about how much of this book’s focus is on immigration policy and our agricultural industry’s general abuse of our immigrant workforce and the naked racism hurled at them by white residents of our rural communities. I honestly don’t know which is more disgusting. One silver-lining was that I was reading this book which features nincompoop “attorney” Kris Kobach right when he lost his election for Kansas Governor. (hey, fuck you, Kobach).

The Chain is an incredibly well researched exposé on the industrial meat industry and the unintended consequences that are caused to our environment, our immigrant community, and our rural economies. It also happens to be beautifully written by a journalist who clearly has a passion for these topics and who desperately wants change.

[Halle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was mostly just going to focus on the truth behind what goes into the meat we eat (e.g. the pink goo in mcnuggets) but it covered so much more. Ted Genoways introduces us to Hormel Foods (best known for creating Spam) and other meat processing plants and farms across the country, while uncovering what seemed to be an endless amount of horrors. Immigrant exploitation, food contamination, animal abuse, crooked industries, pollution, questionable government policies, and a mysterious disease are some of the many factors that are involved. I got a lot more out of this book than I had expected and was especially shocked to find out that corrupt factories like these actually exist in America. I will also be hesitant to eat pork, or really any kind of meat, going forward.

* On a side note, there were a lot of acronyms in this book and at times it was difficult to remember what they all stood for when he mentioned them. It didn't take away from the message but was a bit of an annoyance.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very page-turning and calm analysis of the largely disgusting world of industrial food. The book covers the network of dangerous labor, immigration, watershed impact, antibiotic overuse, supply chain logistics, and government policies that result in cheap walmart pork chops. I'm sure (sadly) this book won't change my behavior, but it's very illuminating about all the unpleasantness (e.g. aerosoled pig brains causing neurological damage in line workers at the hog "head table" in a processing factory, human MRSA infection correlating with proximity to CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations)) that constitutes our current mainstream food chain.

[Christie Martel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a very informative, in-depth look at the food producing company Hormel. It deals with animal treatment, meat processing and inspection conditions, the lives of workers, economic impacts for cities/towns which host Hormel plants, etc. It is fascinating to see how the greed of one company can have so many ripple effects on communities. Definitely recommend it to others who want to get some sense of the current societal and economic upheavals happening across the U.S. and what's fuelling them.

[Lionel Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chain is written in a way that I really like. The author takes a subject that I have not really thought about all that much and then writes an engrossing book about it. That is the case here. It is similar to a story I wrote a few years ago about the poultry industry which chronicles the abuse to both man and animal. After reading this account that deals with pork production and the Hormel company in particular I am beginning to think that the modern factory farm system of obtaining meat is inherently degrading to those involved on the front lines of its production.
The story focuses on the Quality Pork Processing (QPP) plant in Fremont Nebraska and it’s complicated relationship with Hormel meatpackers. QPP is responsible for the production of one of Hormel’s premier products, Spam. Spam is what economists call an Inferior Good in that it’s demand rises as the economy gets worse. Since this book was written during the depths of the housing crisis the canned meat business was booming. But as it turns out not all was well at QPP and with this increased business came to speed up lines, more injuries to workers, missed health violations, and a mysterious neurological illness in the brain removal room.
The author does a good job of drawing a line between the many issues that the meat processing business involves and connects it to many of the hot button issues in our society ten years later. The immigration status and controversy over the employees, the workplace injuries and who pays for them, the welfare and health of the animals as well as the environmental impact of the whole operation. There is a lot that goes into each and every can of the nation's most canned lunch meat.
If you are looking for a book about the history of Spam itself, you will get some of that but that is not really what the book is about. If you want to understand a little more about how this nation's meat supply is produced so cheaply and efficiently and the true cost of that this is a book you should read.

[Emilio III · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ted Genoways' book The Chain is another addition to a long list of narratives that have detailed the industrialization of food. In this case, the subject concerns the industrialization of pork.

The same problems highlighted here are also present in other livestock food: beef, turkey, chicken, and fish. In an ever-growing demand for meat, locally sourced food has been driven out by factory farms. The results are often unsafe food, animal abuse, and environmental damage.

The author focuses primarily on a Hormel owned and operated plant in Freemont, Nebraska. The plant is one of only two in the world that produces Spam, a product consisting mostly of fat and pork trimmings. While introducing the history of Spam, the author touches on a wide array of related topics: worker's safety, animal safety, immigration, politics, land erosion, and the environmental impact of slaughtering up to 20,000 pigs a day in a single plant.

As much as I would like to give up meat after reading a book like this, I find it a challenge. I live a busy life that requires that I often have to eat on the run. I need something quick, nourishing, and portable. A ham and cheese sandwich meets that criteria. That doesn't mean I'm okay with what has gone into the production of that slice of ham. The government has a role to play in assuring consumers that the food they eat is safe.

The long term solution I envision is cell-based meat production. In a few years, it will be possible to grow meat in large industrial labs. There are a host of issues that will need to be solved, such as what happens to all the livestock once we no longer need them? Another solution involves plant-based foods.

In the interim, consumers can encourage change with their pocketbooks. We should demand that our meat come from a safe workplace, with well-treated livestock, and with minimal environmental damage. Choose local over factory farms. Everyone's health depends on it.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recommend this book to someone who has a close connection to one of the multiple industries or interests in the story. I picked it up because I thought it would be a book about the food industry and its supply chain as a whole and instead it was more of a deep dive into Hormel and hog farming.

The research, history, politics, and business involved in Hormel's operations and the hog farming was interesting, but I finished the book feeling like it was specific to Hormel and that I couldn't draw conclusions about the beef industry, chicken industry, or other food industries, although it is entirely possible that it is very similar across the other sectors.

This book had a little of everything in it: business, labor relations, politics, food inspection,
environmental inspection, environmental activism, and immigration. It was very eye opening in that regard to see how these seemingly separate areas all come together to create the world that we live in and is very poignant right now given the immigration debate that has recently been resuscitated.

I didn't find myself enthralled with it and it was a bit of challenge to stick with it but I did learn a lot of great things from the book and it caused me to think more about my beliefs. Reading it warrants further reading and research before I'd jump to any conclusions but it was a good start.

[Whitney Lawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel a lot of reviews about this novel are exceptionally skewed because people are expecting a novel about the mistreatment of animals, but the crux of this novel is about the corruption of big pork agricultural business. The focus of this novel is how the pork industry has manipulated, corrupted, and solidified its position in big business and our country. It's a horrifying tale of how industries can damage not only their workers (pushing out workers and damaging immigration status), but also create and affect state policies and exemptions. Personally, I found it to be a great representation of how large companies manipulate and create federal loopholes in a horrific way, and how they influence regulations within a state, and how they can be exceptionally damaging to environmental aspects of a state (including specifically a lot of cases Iowa in this novel). It is and should be horrifying to see what animals go through, which is addressesed, but the main concept of this novel focuses on the amazing yet insane evolution of how big corporations damage people, communities, counties, and states. And due to culpability of politicians- unethical regulations, policies, laws, and exemptions that are passed without consideration of any animals, communities or people. It's amazing to see what people tolerate (or must tolerate due to circumstance). It reveals the decade long proceeds of how these companies profit and engage in what would be illegal practices if it wasn't for the manipulation of politics within the state and federal jurisdictions. This is a really great piece of informational text about how specific parties utilize and manipulate the public in order to gain control-- in order to gain power and exploit minorities and the public just for profit.

[Mik · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great expose' and fabulous deep dive into a subject that will make you re-think what to put in your mouth! In full disclosure, my husband and I started growing and raising much of our own food 6 years ago after seeing the documentary "Food Inc.". Since then, we've both read MANY books on the topic of America's industrial food system and the factory farms overtaking our national foodscape. This book offers readers a compassionate look into the laborers of meat processing facilities in particular. These facilities rely heavily on undocumented workers, they recruit and exploit workers who feel they have no "voice" for complaint. Historically, these factory "farms" and processing plants have taken advantage of African Americans, Hispanics and recently more Asian workers including Laotians and Hmongs. The companies are predatory and abusive. This book offers much insight into the suffering of workers and the companies' strategies to thwart worker's rights. I very much recommend this tale to any American who cares about the food they put into their bodies, and the humanity of the people who labor to bring it to their dinner plates.

[Carole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genoways looks at particular cases in the meat packing industry, specific workers and Hormel-supplying plants, delving into the workers’ struggles, the corporate responses, and the broader effects of these companies. Perhaps only the subtitle of the book was a lie; Genoways makes no attempt at a universal survey of agriculture today, and the book would be worse if he did. His writing style is smooth, with a placating professional tone occasionally broken by liberal outrage. After also reading Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon, I’m beginning to wonder if this tone is an unavoidable result of experience or exposure to Virginia Quarterly Review editorial staff.
The book was better than I thought it would be, from what I know about Genoways. An interesting read, but no masterwork.

[Rachel Bhattacharyya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up in rural Minnesota, 15 -30 miles from some of the locations in The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food. This book hits home. Nevertheless, I was unaware of the intricacies of this disturbing story - even though I witnessed the changes in meat processing from the 1960's, onward. I have long been aware of the increasing community tensions and am dismayed by the growing intolerance from local citizens against ethnically different groups who actually share their same goals. Both groups have been, and continue to be, unfairly manipulated by corporate greed and selfishness. Ted Genoways does a thorough and riveting job of telling this story and warning readers of future environmental and social problems to come. Sadly, we are seeing some of the fallout play out in real time.