Credit: AP/Paul Sakuma

Fremont, Nebraska, 2004: Maria Lopez, a meat production line worker, gathers and bags fat trimmings while her co-worker slices pork shoulders. Struggling to keep up with the plant’s accelerated assembly line, her fingers slip toward a spinning saw on her workspace — she gets a bit too close; her reaction is a bit too slow. Lopez is rushed from the premises, her severed index finger reattached in a series of surgeries that leave her without feeling in the appendage. The drama keeps her out of work for two months — and, when the plant’s line speed is once again increased, convinces her to quit her job for good — but the accident wasn’t enough to bring production even to a pause. As journalist Ted Genoways describes it in his new book, ”her coworkers were instructed by floor supervisors to wash the station of her blood, but the line never stopped.”

What journalist Christopher Leonard recently did for Tyson and the chicken industry, Genoways, the former editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, does […]