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HARPER’S MAGAZINE/MAY 2013 $6.99
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH Undercover in an Industrial Slaughterhouse By Ted Conover AN UNCOMMON PAIN Living with the Mystery of Headache By Sallie Tisdale Also: Charles Baxter and Jane Smiley
May Cover Final US Subs.indd_0322 1 3/22/13 12:34 PM REPORT
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse By Ted Conover
he cattle arrive in the kitchen tour. The Tperforated silver trailers wrangler and his crew are called cattle pots that let moving cattle up the in wind and weather and ramp. To do this, they vent out their hot breath wave sticks with white and !atus. It’s hard to see plastic bags tied to the inside a cattle pot. The ends over the animals’ drivers are in a hurry to heads; the bags frighten unload and leave, and are the cattle and move them always speeding by. (When along. For cows that don’t I ask Lefty how meat gets spook, the workers also bruised, he says, “You ever have electric prods—in see how those guys drive?”) defiance, I was told, of The trucks have come company regulations— from feedlots, some nearby, that crackle when ap- some in western Nebraska, plied to the nether parts. a few in Iowa. The plant The ramp really does slaughters about 5,100 stink. “Yeah,” I say in cattle each day, and a stan- Spanish. “Why does it dard double-decker cattle smell so bad?” pot holds only about forty, so there’s a will be urged by workers toward the “They’re scared. They don’t want to constant stream of trucks pulling in to curving ramp that leads up into the die,” the worker replies. But that’s disgorge, even before the line starts up a building. The ramp has a roof and no what they’re here to do, and once on little after six #.$. sharp turns. It was designed by the live- the ramp, they’re just a First the cattle are weighed. Then stock expert Temple Grandin, and the few moments away from it. they are guided into narrow outdoor curves and penumbral light are believed pens angled diagonally toward the en- to soothe the animals in their %nal mo- n the opposite side of the plant trance to the kill !oor. A veterinarian ments. But the soothing goes only so far. isO the end of the story. There, scores arrives before our shift and begins to “Huele mal, no?” says one of the Mex- of refrigerated trailers wait their turn inspect them; she looks for open ican wranglers: “It stinks, doesn’t it?” He at the loading docks. They’ll be %lled wounds, problems walking, signs of dis- holds his nose against the ammoniac with boxes of meat and cattle by- ease. When their time comes, the cattle smell of urine as I visit the pens with products, which will make their way Carolina.1 We are new U.S. Department in one form or another to a store or Ted Conover is the author of The Routes of of Agriculture meat inspectors, getting restaurant near you. Man, Newjack, and Coyotes, among other books. He is Distinguished Writer in Resi- 1 To protect the privacy of people I encoun- In the middle, facing U.S. High- dence at New York University’s Arthur tered in and around the slaughterhouse, way 30 to the north, is the door L. Carter Journalism Institute. many names have been changed. through which humans enter the
Photographs from Schuy ler, Nebraska © Jared Moossy REPORT 31
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 31 3/27/13 9:12 AM plant. We enter willingly, from all ap- pearances, and under careful scrutiny: cameras monitor the main entrance (as they do almost the entire plant), and workers must pass through a secu- rity shack en route and show their company I.D.’s. Though I tend to dislike scrutiny, I actually don’t mind the shack, be- cause it makes me feel important: instead of a Cargill I.D., I get to !ash my police-style USDA badge. And when I leave, at shift’s end, the guards can’t ask to see what’s in my bag, as they can the regular workers. Even my walk to and from the car is short- er, because a couple dozen parking places near the entrance are reserved for the USDA. While the inspectors work at Car- gill Meat Solutions, we are not em- ployed by them. Rather, you could say, we are embedded. The company accommodates us along the chain, at four special places on the kill !oor. (In another part of the plant, farther downstream, a different, smaller group of USDA employees grades the meat.) Cargill also provides us with our own locker rooms, a couple of of"ces for the veterinarians in charge, and a break room where we eat meals and hold meetings. Carolina and I are not like most of the other inspectors. This becomes obvious as Herb, our immediate super- visor, sits us down to "ll out paper- work. The regulars are putting on their white hard hats, grabbing the wide aluminum scabbards that hold their knives, and heading out onto the !oor to begin the day. They are most- ly white and mostly from the area around Schuyler, Nebraska, the town we sit at the edge of. I grew up in Colorado but arrived in Nebraska from my home in New York City, which strikes many here as odd. Carolina was born in Mexico, spent her childhood in California, came to Nebraska a few years ago, and became a U.S. citizen in the past year. Still, in certain ways she has more in common with our co- workers than I do, because she has worked in meat plants before—the JBS packinghouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, where she was a quality- assurance technician, and before that a kosher slaughterhouse in Hastings, Nebraska, where she worked on the
32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 32 3/27/13 9:12 AM line—which means she has experience with a knife. Which I do not. That experience, I will soon learn, counts for a lot.
erb is the tallest inspector, probablyH by a couple of inches. He reminds me of Garrison Keillor. He is soft-spoken and respectful and regrets that we had to buy our own waterproof boots—he doesn’t think that’s fair. But he supplies us with the other things we’ll need, starting with a doz- en uniforms, which consist of navy- blue cotton pants and white short- sleeve shirts with our !rst names sewn over the breast pockets. (He had or- dered these a couple of weeks earlier, asking my size over the phone and suggesting I order a bit large: “You can always grow into ’em—all the rest of us have!”) We get digital stopwatches to hang around our necks, so that we can time our breaks and know when to change posts. The aluminum scab- bard is "at and about a foot long; it holds our knives, a meat hook, and a sharpening steel. Some inspectors wear the scabbard around their waists, securing it with a white plastic chain. But most just hang it near them at their post. Hairnets are required for everybody, and men with beards must also wear a beard net. Herb hands us each a hard hat and points out the supply of earplugs (also required) sit- ting on a nearby desk: “Get yourself a pair of those and I’ll show you around.” We leave the break room, walk down a short corridor, up some stairs, and through a pair of swinging metal doors to a singular circle of hell. The kill "oor is a hubbub of human and mechanical activity, something hor- rific designed by ingenious and no doubt well-meaning engineers. Herb shouts a few things, but the kill "oor is so loud that I have no idea what he’s saying—and little understanding, at !rst, of what I’m seeing. Though it’s called a "oor, it’s actually a room, about the size of a football !eld. It’s !lled with workers on their feet, facing some frac- tion of a cow as it passes slowly in front of them, suspended from the chain. Three workers are perched on hydrau- lic platforms !tted with electric saws, which they use to split hanging car- casses in half, right down the middle of the spinal column.
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Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 33 3/27/13 9:12 AM The key to comprehension is the chain, which moves the carcasses around the enormous room. It begins on the eastern wall, just beyond the area where the cows come in from the out- side. This is the only section of the room hidden from view, behind a parti- tion. But Herb takes us up onto a metal catwalk and through a heavy door. From there, grasping a railing, we can look down on the killing. Passing one by one through a small opening in the wall, each animal enters a narrow, slightly elevated chute. On a platform just above the chute is a guy called the knocker. Suspended on cables in front of him is something that looks like a fat toaster oven with handles on either side: a captive-bolt gun. The knocker’s job is to place the gun against the animal’s forehead and pull the trig- ger. Most of the time, the cow immedi- ately slumps forward, blood oozing from the circle where the thick steel bolt went in and came out. If one shot doesn’t do the trick, the knocker does it again. Meanwhile, down on !oor level, a second worker wearing a helmet with a face mask and protective padding has reached into the chute from below and attached a cuff around the animal’s left rear leg. Once the cow has been knocked, the chain hoists that leg and then the rest of the animal up into the air, and the body begins its journey around the room. Carolina and I watch this for some time without talking. The knocker moves slowly, patiently waiting for his gun to achieve good contact with the animal’s forehead. It usually takes more than one try, as the animals duck down or try to peer over the side of the chute, whose width the knocker can actually control with a foot pedal. One cow, unlike the others, lifts her head up high in order to sniff the knocking gun. What could this thing be? It’s her last thought. The knocker waits until her wet nose goes down, then lowers the gun and thunk. She slumps, then gets hoisted aloft with the others. The knocked animals hang next to one another for a while, waiting for the chain to start moving—like gondolas at the base of a ski lift. From time to time an animal kicks violently, spo- radically. “They’re not really dead yet,” says Carolina, which I can hear because she’s close to my ear and it’s slightly less
34 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 34 3/27/13 9:12 AM loud in here. In most cases, apparently, what she says is true and intentional: the pumping of their hearts will help drain the blood from their bodies once their necks are sliced open, which will happen in the ensuing minutes. By the time the chain has made a turn or two, the kicking will stop. Dismemberment proceeds by de- grees. At different posts, workers make cuts in the hide, clip off the hooves, and clip off the horns, if any. The hide is gradually peeled from the body, un- til !nally a big "ap of loose skin is grasped by the “downpuller” machine, which yanks the whole thing off like a sweater and drops it through a hole in the "oor. Here, for the !rst time, the cow no longer looks like a cow. Now it’s a 1,200-pound piece of proto-meat making its circuit of the room. Soon after, the heads, now dangling only by the windpipe, are detached from the body and go off on their own side chain. The huge tongues are cut out and hung on hooks adjacent to the heads: head, tongue, head, tongue. They turn a corner, pass through a steam cabinet that cleans them, make another quick turn, and meet their !rst inspectors.
ood inspection in the United States isF a patchwork affair. By most accounts, we have Upton Sinclair to thank for the federal effort: The Jungle frightened the nation so thoroughly in 1906 that Con- gress passed legislation mandating in- spection the same year. Today, the USDA is responsible for overseeing slaughter operations, employing 7,500 inspectors throughout the country. The Food and Drug Administration is re- sponsible for most other areas: fresh produce (the source of recent outbreaks of such pathogens as Listeria, on canta- loupes, and Salmonella, on spinach), seafood, dairy, and processed foods like peanut butter. USDA inspection has the bigger budget, re"ecting a belief from bygone days that meat carries the greater risk of contamination: without a USDA stamp, meat cannot leave a slaughterhouse. Over the past genera- tion, however, produce and seafood have come to eclipse meat as sources of outbreaks of food-borne illness. Among the reasons are thought to be increasing consumption of fresh food, and food- distribution systems that can quickly
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Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 35 3/27/13 9:12 AM Drawings by Olivier Kugler, based on a video, produced by the American Meat Institute 36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013 and narrated by Temple Grandin, of a tour around a Cargill beef-processing facility
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 36 3/27/13 9:12 AM spread contamination across state and wall, for which I’m grateful. First we look to take a look. (Marking out meat international borders. into their mouths from behind, through later con"rmed to have tuberculosis In 2011, President Obama signed the a daffodil-shaped opening that I believe bacilli earned one Schuyler inspector Food Safety Modernization Act, which is the epiglottis. We’re checking for ton- a $3,000 bonus.) strengthens and refocuses the FDA. sils, making sure they’ve been removed. Last, we use the hook and knife to Meanwhile, a consensus has grown These are considered “specified risk hold and slice open six more lymph that the USDA’s regi- materials” (SRM) and nodes hanging from the back of the men of visual, carcass- get disposed of along tongue. Somebody skilled, like Stan, by-carcass inspection— with a portion of the can do this in two or three seconds. For enshrined by the 1906 small intestine called Carolina, it’s closer to "ve. For me, at laws—places too much the distal ileum. the start, it’s more like ten—they’re manpower on the kill Next we peek around slippery. After cutting open the nodes, !oor and not enough in the side of the head at we turn to the pedal-operated sink be- labs and meat-grinding the teeth in the lower hind us to rinse our knife and hook and plants to test beef for E. jaw. If three pairs are rubber-gloved hands of the blood and coli, poultry for Cam- visible, the animal is !esh that now cover them. If we cut into pylobacter, and pork for thirty months of age or anything vile, knife and hook must also Toxopl a sm a. Already, a older and at greater be dipped into the sanitizer, a cylinder cooperative effort be- risk of carrying bovine of near-boiling water next to the sink. tween the USDA’s Food spongiform encepha- Then we wait for the next Safety and Inspection lopathy (BSE, or mad- head to move into range. Service (FSIS) and the THE AUTHOR’S KNIVES AND MEAT HOOK. cow disease). The brain poultry industry has set PHOTOGRAPH BY TED CONOVER and the spinal cord of uring our breaks, we can visit the stage for vast reduc- these older cattle are Dthe Cargill canteen upstairs, where tions in the number of on-site inspectors. also considered SRM. A worker is sup- food is served hot and pretty cheap, (“Splash enough chemicals on and you posed to have plugged the knocker’s and some do. But it’s more popular to can call anything safe,” a Schuyler in- hole in the forehead of such animals bring your own food and hang out in spector told me.) In beef plants, though, with a cork—to prevent the escape of the break room, which has the slightly the inspectors remain in full force. By brain matter—and marked the top of threadbare air of privilege you "nd in law, in fact, the chain cannot the head with blue ink. These heads the business lounge of a small airport. move without them.2 will be disposed of in a land"ll. I "nd the break room fascinating; its The nontactile inspection is over bulletin boards, cabinet fronts, and mis- erb leaves us at Heads, the within three seconds. Now comes the cellaneous surfaces are all plastered mostH demanding of the several posts hard part. With a knife in one hand with things to read. There are ponder- we rotate through during the shift. and a meat hook in the other, we slice ous directives from the USDA, boring Five inspectors on the day shift and the !esh from the cheeks on either side notices about union elections, fuzzy four at night tend to the "fty feet of of the head—the goal is to let the !aps printouts of cattle teeth to aid in the chain—and each examines a new dangle down, not to sever them. As I identification of overage animals. A head and tongue every minute or so. soon discover, making these cuts neat- dry-erase board announces shift swaps Carolina and I both have trainers: ly takes skill. Done well, they expose a for the coming week; a photocopied she’s with Lefty and I’m with Stan. We thin layer of meat against the bone, as seniority ranking shows Lefty on top. watch what they do and then, over the well as the insides of the lymph nodes There are a couple of schematics of the roar of the machinery, try to digest next to the ears. plant indicating where to seek cover in their explanations and do the same. If anything looks amiss, we “mark it case of a tornado. Before taking our knives to the hang- out” by stamping the top and sides of The refrigerator is adorned with ing heads, we’re told to look at them the head with blue ink. These heads funny pictures and cartoons. You’re not closely. They are a gruesome sight, drip- get thrown down the “condemned fat, says one sled dog to another, you’re ping with blood, eyeballs protruding the chute” to the basement, where they just a little husky. On its side are card- way eyeballs do from a skinned skull, are rendered. If it looks extra bad— board wheels, one pair for each shift, small muscles exposed and twitching as say, if a lymph node is full of pus or that indicate where everybody starts on though the animal were still alive. The shows other irregularities—we push a a given day: Heads, Livers, Pluck (the heads face away from us, toward the tiled button that sounds a horn and sum- heart and lungs), and Rail (where each mons a Cargill foreman, who af"xes a carcass gets a "nal inspection before 2 In February, Secretary of Agriculture Tom red tag to the head. That takes about leaving the kill !oor). Vilsack warned that the federal budget seques- "ve seconds more. All in all, there are about thirty ter would soon lead to a partial furlough of In the worse cases—heads that slaughter inspectors assigned to Cargill USDA meat inspectors. This measure, which show signs of a serious infection, such Meat Solutions in Schuyler, split be- would have curtailed or even halted produc- tion, was narrowly avoided when Congress as tuberculosis—we attach a blue tag, tween the day shift (6:08 $.%. to allowed the agency to divert $55 million from so that Doc Barbera, the veterinarian 2:38 &.%.) and the night shift (3:16 &.%. elsewhere in its budget to pay inspectors. who heads our FSIS detail, will know to 11:46 &.%.). Most have not been to
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Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 37 3/26/13 1:40 PM college, but worked elsewhere in the ously, augmenting or correcting the late to the /oor, you will force other meat industry, often on the line, before answers she hears the others give to my inspectors to cover for you. Ours is becoming inspectors. This is a de!nite questions, and is the !rst to tell me over, and I follow Stan to step up: line jobs top out at about !fteen about Red Meat School, a training the viscera table. dollars an hour, while federal inspector camp for veteran inspectors. jobs begin at that level and reach close Hard hats and scabbards are left in his inspection post, which com- to thirty dollars an hour plus overtime. the locker rooms or around the edges prisesT both Livers and Pluck, is the most Most inspectors are men, but there are of the break room—usually there’s disturbing, and the most interesting, on a few women. Even so, Carolina stands blood on them, so they don’t often !nd the kill /oor. Just upstream, the skinned out from the group, which tends to be their way to the table. Many people carcasses have had their tails cut off. conservative in appearance and con- have decorated their hard hats with Now the chain carries them over a duct. She wears a lot of mascara and stickers. Tina’s says, on one side, "’# wide, /at, stainless-steel conveyor belt— eyeliner, a diamond stud below the left $%& '()* "’# *$+%,"$- &."'. the table—moving at exactly the same corner of her mouth; her long nails are While others read the paper, Caro- speed they do. On this belt stand work- fuchsia. Across the back of her jean lina answers texts and talks on the ers in white rubber boots, who use their jacket is her last name spelled out in phone. Often she speaks rather loudly, knives to slice open the body cavity and shiny silver studs. She does not act de- which annoys some of the inspectors. “drop” the organs at their feet. mure or submissive in the least, and she But she defuses this annoyance with There’s a lot of steam (those innards mixes Spanish in with her English her good-natured chatter and /irting. are still hot) and splashing as the viscera whenever possible—which I don’t think “Taylor, qué pasó?” “Perry, cómo estás?” hit the table with a plop. Using their everyone here likes. Men whistle at her The question of nicknames comes gloved hands and booted feet, the work- in the plant, but not in the break room. up—someone observes that though ers nudge the big livers to one side of the On our !rst day, we sit at the big Carolina and I are both left-handed, table, and the pluck—the hearts, still table in the middle of the room, which Lefty has already claimed the moniker. connected to the lungs—to the other. is covered with sections of the Omaha Someone mentions that Perry’s nick- A different worker, standing on the World-Herald and bowls of microwave name is Spike and asks Carolina how /oor like us, /ips and slides the massive popcorn. Stan takes a Mountain Dew you say that word (which she mishears livers so that they’re right side up and from the refrigerator and grabs a seat. as “Spark”) in Spanish. properly presented to us for inspection. He’s in his forties, with a scraggly blond “Chispa,” she answers. It’s a lot to take in, the river of or- beard and a rangy build. He has a quick “Cheese puff?” comes the reply. gans /owing slowly by. The most dra- wit and likes to tease and provoke. There is laughter. “Cheese puff—that matic parts, the large, bulbous stom- His buddy Hank sits across from him, !ts you, Perry!” achs in the middle, we’re suppose to doing the crossword puzzle from the “Or chispita,” she offers. look at and touch but not dissect: most paper. Tina, a bit younger and with “Cheese pizza? Cheese pizza, Perry!” are full of the animal’s last meal, gener- young kids, tells me that her father was People start checking their stop- ally corn but sometimes also hay—we an inspector, too—she uses his old watches. Breaks last !fteen minutes see it on those occasions when the sharpening steel. She takes the job seri- and are staggered, and if you return stomach gets nicked. We do gently prod
38 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 38 3/27/13 9:12 AM a spot called the ruminoreticular junc- bile duct, which you open to check for and leave them "at. Practiced hands tion, where the cow’s large !rst stomach liver "ukes. Tina shows me my !rst of can do this with a single, graceful mo- meets the reticulum, a kind of !ltering these, a "at, slow-moving green thing tion. Not mine. Unless you slice just compartment. I’m not told what to look about three quarters of an inch long the right way, the cardiac muscle !ghts for, but I !nd something soon enough: with cilia all around the edge, like a back, requiring several strokes before it a two-inch metal screw. Herb has ex- huge paramecium, that got into the cow yields. And unless you cut in just the plained that this part of the stomach through its drinking water. She grabs right place, the opened heart will not “is like the bottom of a garbage pail”— the #.$. %&$'()*(+ & )-&+(.&(+ stamp, lie "at but instead stand up awkwardly. the heavy, bad stuff settles here and which sits in a well of blue ink attached A proper !rst cut, which exposes all the sometimes gets stuck. to the side of the table, and stamps the heart’s chambers, will often release a Another day, I notice a four-inch wire liver once. That signi!es to the workers warm pond of blood. Practiced inspec- sticking out of the stomach near the downstream that the liver is not suit- tors get none of this on them; a newbie, junction. I assume that the wire, like the able for human consumption but is still I’m sad to say, gets splashed all the time. drops of oil and the odd bit of latex okay for things like cat food. The hand you use makes a huge dif- glove we occasionally !nd on the vis- A bigger problem you identify by ference, and Stan, right-handed, had a cera table, came from upstream on the moving your gloved hand over the hard time modeling lefty technique. kill "oor—a piece of some machine that liver’s smooth surface, and by simply Finally he placed his knife in his left got lodged in the cow. But Herb tells me looking at it. With disturbing regular- hand. His graceful moves disappeared it’s much more likely that the animal ate ity, this inspection turns up evidence as he tried to !gure it out; eventually, as the wire at some point in its life and of an abscess, usually a big white bump though forgetting I was there, he got lived with it jutting out of its stomach visible or palpable just under the sur- immersed in the point-of-view exercise. for some time. “Cows eat anything, and face, as though there were an egg em- I imitated his motions as the other in- what they can’t digest stays there,” he bedded there. If we detect an abscess, spectors around the table watched. explains. Also, he says, “they’re tough.” we stamp the liver twice, indicating There was some shaking of heads. They can live with pain. that it should be disposed of. “He still hasn’t got it right.” The inspection post on the livers side Fifteen minutes on Livers 1, !fteen Lefty and Stan agreed to swap train- of the table is, in my opinion, the best, minutes on Livers 2, then it’s time to ees so that I might see it done more because livers are easy to cut. Using the move to Pluck 1 on the other side. We organically. Lefty was in his forties and smaller of our two knives—the “lamb palpate the lungs and slice away the had worked as an inspector since skinner” or “liver knife”—we slice off a esophagus, exposing and cutting into shortly after high school. He opened small lymph node with a soft !lleting two sets of lymph nodes. Next, and hearts one after another, making them motion that, if done well, exposes a thin truly dif!cult for me, is slicing open look as sliceable as butter. Again and white bile duct. You know it’s the bile the heart. again I tried to imitate him. Slowly I duct because it’s !lled with a liquid as The hearts are wildly various, soft or improved. Just before it was time to bright yellow as Stan’s Mountain Dew. !rm, small as a cantaloupe or bigger swap positions, without knowing how The second cut, with the sharp tip of than a honeydew. We are supposed to or why it worked, I sliced a heart and the knife, is away from you and into the slice them open, then "ip them over it opened up as though I’d said a magic
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Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 39 3/27/13 9:12 AM word. Blood spilled across the stainless to the town supermarket and Chona’s, is as cold as a refrigerator), are gradu- steel in front of me. “Yes,” I said, “yes.” a family Mexican restaurant that oc- ally disarticulated. The sides of beef— I looked at Lefty. He smiled. cupies a former Hardee’s. But I wanted literally one side of a carcass—are !rst “One down,” he said, “a a longer-term arrangement, and began halved into forequarter and hindquar- million to go.” to scan newspaper ads and bulletin ter. Then there is a further subdivision boards. I was a day too late for a small into salable cuts of meat. had never heard of Schuyler, Ne- house that the landlord had recently The workers in Fab are mainly ar- braska,I when I applied for an inspector renovated: “I ended up renting it to rayed in long rows along parallel moving job. I wanted to learn not only how some Mexicans. Wish you’d called ear- belts, and although the process is im- meat is inspected, but how slaughter lier.” When I started asking around the pressively automated, with all kinds of works. The demographic side of things USDA break room, however, the in- machinery cunningly crafted to present also intrigued me. A century ago, spectors who lived in town—Stan, meat to the workers and then move it packinghouses were located in big cit- Lefty, a supervisor named Peter— on its way, the main tool of production ies like Chicago, where the livestock started throwing out the names of is the knife wielded by a human hand. arrived by rail. An elderly New York Schuyler landlords. From a catwalk, we observed the activ- neighbor of mine once told me of see- One of these was named Sammy. “I ity below: unlike the workers on the kill ing sheep driven through streets on think he might have something,” offered "oor, the ones here were packed closely the East Side of Manhattan, near the Lefty. “My uncle rents two units in his together, practically elbow to elbow, as current site of the United Nations. complex, and I think only one other is they engaged in their repetitive motions. But by the 1950s, the packinghouses occupied. There’s eight units in all.” Most were Latino, with a smattering of began moving to small-town America, By that evening, one of them was very dark-skinned people, likely Soma- where the livestock could arrive by mine. Rent was $300 a month. Sammy lis, and a few white people as well. (Car- truck. Schuyler got its beef plant in had once loved to ski, and the place, gill employs more than 2,000 workers at 1968, joining an eventual cohort of which he’d designed himself, had a rustic its Schuyler plant, and says they repre- similar towns across cattle country: Seventies-era look. Roger, another of my sent more than twenty nationalities.) Grand Island, Lexington, and West co-workers, had lived there as a younger It was cold in here. Carolina shiv- Point, Nebraska; Dodge City, Garden man. “It still got the wood paneling and ered and crossed her arms. “I hated City, Holcomb, and Liberal, Kansas; shag rugs?” he asked. I nodded. working in Fab,” she said, referring to Fort Morgan and Greeley, Colorado. The building was located across her job at the kosher beef plant in An American rural proletariat was town from the “pack,” as Sammy and Hastings. Indeed, most workers regard born. Plants unionized and the work- everyone else called the plant. Its main the kill "oor, with its violence and riv- ers made a good living: a typical wage disadvantage, which Sammy freely con- ers of blood, as preferable to Fab, pure- in the 1970s was between seven and fessed, was that it was only two blocks ly on the basis of temperature. nine dollars per hour, well above the from the railroad tracks that bisected Next we visited some specialty areas. federal minimum. Schuyler, and trains blew through, In one room, large stainless-steel ma- But then salaries took a drop, and whistles screaming, at all hours of the chines attended by technicians whirred Latino workers started coming in. day and night. (I told him that I actu- and churned out masses of pink pellets; Schuyler had fewer than 200 Hispanic ally liked the sound of trains.) The only they looked like Tater Tots made out of residents in 1990. Today there are more tenant besides Lefty’s uncle was a free- meat. “Know what this is?” Herb asked than 4,000, about two thirds of the lance roofer in his seventies, whom I us. “You heard of pink slime?” town’s population. The demographic liked a lot. This controversial beef filler had mix in most other beef-packing towns “Why do you think Sammy leaves been in the news since the New York has also tilted Hispanic. all these apartments vacant?” I asked Times wrote about it in 2009. The meat Once the FSIS approved my employ- a neighbor one evening. industry calls it lean !nely textured ment application, I was offered a post in “I think he doesn’t want to rent beef (LFTB) and boneless lean beef Schuyler and accepted. Herb called me to Mexicans,” the man trimmings (BLBT), but its famous nick- up a couple of weeks before I was due to answered. name comes from an FSIS microbiolo- report. We discussed what I’d need to gist who dissented from his agency’s bring and where I’d want to live. I’d arolina and I were approaching approval of it. Gerald Zirnstein wrote probably !nd Columbus, where he and theC end of our weeklong training period that the product was not beef but “sal- many other inspectors lived, most con- (my training would be extended be- vage.” In an email to colleagues re- genial, Herb thought. It was only about cause of my slower pace), and Herb had leased to the Times as part of a Freedom twenty minutes away and had plenty of promised to show us the rest of the of Information Act request, he added: stores and restaurants: “There in Schuy- plant before we began working regular “I do not consider the stuff to be ground ler, it’s mostly burritos and taco stands.” shifts. Hard hats donned and earplugs beef, and I consider allowing it in But I wanted to live in Schuyler. It in, we walked to Fabrication. ground beef to be a form of fraudulent was surprisingly hard to !nd a place. “Fab” is the largest room in the plant, labeling.” Meat companies are not re- Johnnie’s Motel (run by an enterprising the place where the hanging carcasses, quired to disclose the use of ammonia man named Javier) offered temporary having spent two or three days cooling gas to kill bacteria in pink slime. But lodging and a good location, right next down in the tomblike “hot box” (which publicity over how it was made turned
40 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013
Conover Report Final 10.indd_0325 40 3/25/13 9:28 AM consumers away from ground-beef the commentary, and the USDA taking I was feeling proud of the cohort products and drastically hurt sales. it out of some school lunches, it’s like a when someone read aloud from the text Next we descended to the base- witch hunt. Plants have closed, hun- on the webpage, which described how ment and visited the rendering room, dreds of people have lost their jobs, and the workers would be prosecuted for a smelly, dark space where the hides all because of politics and ignorance.” their cruelty. An inspector named Jason are processed in vats of liquid and I was surprised that Doc was so un- piped up. “They’re probably back in begin their transformation into leath- questioning about the safety of indus- Mexico by now,” he said derisively. er. On our way back, we stopped at trial processes like treating meat with “What did you say?” asked Carolina, Offal (divided into red and white), ammonia—Canada, for one, disallows looking up from her mortadella sand- ducked under the heads chain, and meat that has been so treated. But his wich. She had been pouring picante passed through the double doors that frustration with how seemingly irratio- sauce directly into her mouth from the lead to the small white-collar sector nal thinking in big cities can affect life bottle after each bite. of the plant, walking through a little in the country was something that “Oh, I’m just joking,” pool of soapy bubbles intended to cut came up again and again in Schuyler. he said. the amount of grease people track out. The next time was a couple of days Across the hall from the USDA break later, during lunch break. Tina looked ery slowly, I improved. My eye for room, we made one !nal stop: Car- up from her magazine with a sigh of Vmeat got better—I began to under- gill’s video-surveillance headquarters. disgust. “Humanely treated, organic stand what I was seeing. And, probably It was like stepping into another uni- beef,” she groaned, reading from the more important, I got better with a verse. The room was clean, quiet, and page. “What’s that? And why would knife, and had a series of small break- spotless, with a single technician sitting you think they go together? They’re throughs. “You’re pushing too much. in an armchair before an array of mon- not the same.” Try slicing more,” said Nick, watching itors. On the screens were feeds from the Everyone nodded and chuckled. me struggle on heads. “Stand closer to cameras set up around the plant—the Later, I tried to tease out her objection. the tongue before you hook it. And kill "oor, Fab, the parking lots and load- “Well, ‘organic’ is only about what hook straight down. Otherwise it’ll ing docks, everything. At Herb’s request, they’re fed,” she explained. “It has start swinging.” Right on target. the technician showed how she could nothing to do with the conditions of Keeping the knife-edge sharp was aim and zoom the cameras. She was not, their lives. So what does ‘humanely another key skill. I started to use my she said, there to monitor the inspectors. treated’ even mean? Do you take them sharpening steel after every series of Still, it was clear that she could watch into a barn every night? Do you brush cuts, just like everybody else, and no- us if she wanted to: she zoomed in on an them and sing them a song? No cattle ticed that many inspectors kept a inspector named Terry as he !nished are raised that way! It’s some city per- second steel or a sharpening stone at palpating a tongue and turned to rinse son’s fantasy!” What seemed to get her hand for those times when you need- his knife in the sink. goat, as it did Doc’s, was that urban ed more than a touch-up. “All of this goes to headquarters in consumers with little knowledge of When was that? When your knife Wichita, right?” asked Herb. Yes, she animal husbandry or the food industry nicked your hook, for example, as mine said, everything she saw was accessible could in"uence the whole rural econ- did several times a day at !rst, mostly at Cargill headquarters, and she was in omy simply by hopping on some po- on heads. Or when your knife went all regular touch with them, although litically correct bandwagon. the way through the heart and struck about what, exactly, she de- This is not to suggest, however, that the metal table. Even hitting bone clined to say. the inspectors didn’t care about ani- seemed to dull the blade a little bit. mals. The next week, Lefty, sitting at So I struggled, and experimented, ack in the break room, Doc Bar- the table, read aloud from the World- and was helped by kind inspectors when Bbera asked whether we had any ques- Herald about an undercover video of things got overwhelming. They handed tions. Veterinarians run the inspec- workers at a dairy farm in Idaho abus- me their knives and worked on mine in tion details at every plant (in fact, the ing animals. Peter, a supervisor sitting the spare seconds between pieces of FSIS is the country’s largest single nearby at his computer, soon had the meat. They demonstrated how much employer of veterinarians). Doc, as video on his screen, and ten or twelve better the steels worked if you used soap everyone called him, was a mild, inspectors gathered around to watch. and an abrasive pad to keep them clean, grandfatherly man of measured re- It was one of the more horri!c vid- or gave me lessons on the long sharpen- sponses. But when he asked what we eos produced by the advocacy group ing stone in the break room, which sat had seen and I said the words “pink Mercy For Animals, showing workers in its own reservoir of oil. slime,” it pushed a button. twisting cows’ tails, dragging them I knew I was getting better because “The publicity around that is just behind a tractor with a chain, hitting I dulled my knife less often. And be- outrageous,” he said. “The product is them on the head with a plastic cane, cause I didn’t have to replace my gloves proven safe—it might be the safest and trying to force one with a broken as often. All of us wore latex gloves; on thing in ground beef, because it’s so leg to walk. There were disapproving the hand that held the hook, we also thoroughly disinfected. All they do is gasps and groans all around, and no wore a thin fabric no-cut glove under- clean it up with ammonia. It’s been in minimizing it at all. “That makes me neath, which saved me from countless hamburger for years. But now with all sick,” said Tina. self-inflicted injuries. The slightest
REPORT 41
Conover Report Final 10.indd_0325 41 3/25/13 9:28 AM 92ND STREET Y nick, however, would cut the latex and incident had led him to “write up” the UNTERBERG let in water and blood. The !rst week, company with a document called a POETRY CENTER I replaced my gloves two or three times noncompliance report. This meant a day. By week three, some days I didn’t Cargill was required to investigate the 2012/13 SEASON have to replace them at all. incident and respond to the govern- THE VOICE OF LITERATURE There was, however, another lesson ment, in writing, with an explanation + literary readings + performances I had yet to learn. I had quickly grown and a plan to prevent similar lapses + seminars + writing workshops used to “stamping out” meat with ink going forward. Doc told us not to be shy or tagging it for disposal by Cargill man- about stopping the line: “Make them agement. But the real power for an in- get the supervisors out there. That’s spector is the ability to stop the line. what’ll really get their attention.” Every single inspection post has a big “Yeah,” Russell chimed in. “Hit red button that lets you do just that. them in the wallet.” (One inspector LITERARY EVENTS Carolina and I received no special later told me that the cost to the com- instruction on when to push the button, pany of stopping the line is about but obviously it is not a thing you do $10,000 per minute.) APRIL lightly. Stopping the line halts produc- I was pleased to hear this little pep 22 Brecht in the 21st Century tion, idling scores of workers and cost- talk, evidence of the inspectors’ integ- with Classic Stage ing the company money. Nothing can rity. Working inside Cargill, embed- proceed until the problem is resolved. ded in the plant (as well as in the Company The !rst time I saw it done was Fri- community of the company town), 29 Richard Ford and day of my !rst week. Jason, working one could imagine relations getting a Pluck 3 across the table from me, bit too cozy for the public good. Doc James Salter pushed the button. I saw him gesture would have none of it. at the workers downstream from him, My own initiation into line stopping but he wouldn’t talk to them—we’d came two days later. I was nearing the MAY received specific instructions about end of my extended training period, in 6 “Discovery” / Boston that. If something goes wrong, address week two, working the post called the Review Poetry Contest the supervisor, not the worker who Rail. On each of this station’s two Winners’ Reading might be responsible. platforms, an inspector stands beside The supervisor, a heavyset, some- a trimmer—a Cargill worker adept 9 Stephen Adly Guirgis times surly man named Bano, ap- at trimming anything off a carcass that and Lynn Nottage proached Jason at a surprisingly lei- shouldn’t be there before it makes its surely pace. Jason described what he way to the hot box, including bruised 10 W. S. Merwin had seen out of the corner of his eye: a tissue, fecal matter, little pieces of hide, worker had dropped a liver to the "oor. and so forth.3 The job involves visual 13 Robert Alter on It should have been disposed of because inspection and, on the Lower Rail, Translating the Bible of that. Instead, according to Jason, the running one hand along a strip of peri- man had rinsed it in the sink and re- toneum in search of abscesses. I was turned it to the table, and because his training with Taylor, an amiable guy JUST ANNOUNCED! gloved hands were not rinsed !rst, the who, like most inspectors, had gotten liver stood a good chance of being con- his start as a regular line worker at a taminated. The worker denied the beef plant—in his case, Omaha Steaks. story. Jason stood !rm. Bano, angry, Taylor had taped an MP3 player into July 22 found the liver, disposed of it, and his hard hat and was listening to music, Ian McEwan cleaned the table around it. The line but he immediately looked up when I started back up. Elapsed time: a little pointed to a couple of rivulets of thin under ten minutes. black liquid running down the hock. Another time, Nick stopped the line “Stop the line!” he said, and I did. while working on heads. He had no- ticed the third pair of lower teeth that 3 Trimmers on the Rail, and in some other lo- indicate risk of BSE. Yet this head was cations, wear chain mail over their torsos. As not marked with blue ink, and the I would learn, this practice stemmed from an accident in 2000, when a worker in Fab GREAT SEATS AVAILABLE! knocker’s hole in its forehead had not named Jesus Soto Carbajal was “dropping been !lled with a cork to stop the po- For a full listing of events and rounds”—cutting heavy round steaks out of tential leakage of SRM: somebody— hanging carcasses. His knife apparently to purchase tickets, visit more than one person—had messed up. slipped out of his hand just as the round steak dropped, and the weight of the steak drove 92Y.org/Harpers | 212.415.5500 This stoppage lasted much longer, as the blade into his chest, killing him. This was, various supervisors were called in. Doc as far as I heard, the only work-related death AN OPEN DOOR TO EXTRAORDINARY WORLDS™ later revealed in a staff meeting that the to take place inside the Schuyler facility. 92nd Street Y | Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street An agency of UJA-Federation 42 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 42 3/26/13 1:40 PM Foremen jogged up the stairs to our they’ll accept from their suppliers. group of predators (a pack, you might level of the platform. Their best guess The meatpacking companies conform say) presiding over the slaughter of vast was that oil had dripped down from a to them or lose the ability to sell meat herds far too numerous for us to eat newly lubricated chain. In any case, to these major customers. To date, ourselves. The genius and horror of the trimmer reached up and cut off the however, companies have successfully humanity was our ability to send the contaminated parts, while other work- blocked proposals to let the USDA set spoils to anonymous others of our kind ers were dispatched to wipe off the rail similar standards. located states and continents away. In upstream, using long poles with rags Why, asks Schlosser, are meat- the locker room you could see us as attached to them. packers “willing to do for their big naked apes, as hominids killing cows; This was deeply satisfying—but not fast-food customers what they won’t do industrial slaughter is preda- as good as the stoppage about a month for the USDA and the average Amer- tion writ large. later. That one, which lasted so long ican consumer? If we ever get food- that they sent everybody to lunch, safety reform at the USDA, the agency ow are you doing?” Carolina workers and inspectors alike, was initi- will be able to set standards for various “askedH me at the end of the "rst week. ated by Peter, a supervising inspector. pathogens in meat, test widely for “The "rst time I worked with a knife, He had noticed that the !oor drain in them, and order mandatory recalls or my hands hurt so much at night they the transfer hall leading from the kill impose tough punishments kept me awake. I couldn’t put them !oor to the hot box had backed up, when the rules are broken.”4 under a pillow, only on top.” creating a pool of dirty water. The car- I must be made of tougher stuff, I casses on the chain passed right over hift’s end, and a fast walk to the thought. My forearms were sore, but the pool, and anything that dripped USDAS men’s locker room. The narrow nothing worse than after a day of, say, down could splash back up and con- space quickly "lled with exhausted bod- tennis and yard work. taminate the meat. I asked Peter ies not too tired to crack jokes: about My self-congratulation was prema- whether it was hard to shut down the men bending over, about that one La- ture. During my second week, I was plant that way. Not at all, he said. Doc tina trimmer, about the lameness of the awoken by pain in my right forearm— would always back him up, or any of us. Kansas State football team. (The night- my hook arm. I must have been sleep- Still, I knew there would always be shift veterinarian was a K-State diehard ing on it, I thought, adjusting it and human error. One day I confessed to transplanted to Husker country.) Lock- trying to drift off again. I couldn’t. The Herb that I had gotten so jammed up er doors swung open and we had com- pain was sharp, throbbing. I took Ad- at Pluck 3 that I failed to cut open a pany while undressing: glossies of bux- vil, which helped a little. heart as it passed by. Hadn’t I just om, naked women. Or, on one door, The next night it happened again, endangered the food supply? Hillary Clinton’s head photoshopped but this time to my left arm as well. Herb told me not to do that again— onto the body of a strapping female Over the next few days and nights, I but also not to worry. “If there’s a prob- wrestler barely contained by her red- found myself unable to remove socks lem, somebody will catch it,” he as- white-and-blue singlet. My locker was with my right hand—the pain in the sured me, by which he meant either a near the hamper for dirty uniforms, and thumb was excruciating. That entire regular line worker or a “QA”: a Cargill I watched and ducked as, bloodied and hand, especially between the thumb quality-assurance employee. Cargill, balled up, the clothing !ew in from up and index "nger, was now perpetually after all, was also concerned with the to twenty feet away. Each !ight marked swollen. My "ngertips tingled constant- wholesomeness of its product. One day the revelation of another inspector’s ly unless they were completely numb, I heard a fellow inspector opine that, body. It was a cross section of body which they now were every morning in some ways, we were just another types you could have found almost when I woke up. layer of QA. Herb seemed to be saying anywhere—a few guys physically "t, but I started asking about pain at work the same thing—that there was some most far from it. Why, I wondered, were and found that people had a lot to redundancy built into the system, more these so surprising to behold? Why did say—in a terse kind of way. Taylor, with than one chance to catch a problem. the images of wide hairy backs or fat more than "fteen years on the job, told On the other hand, inspectors are white stomachs stick in my brain as I me he took three Advils before every savvy enough to know that even when walked through the parking lot to my shift. Stan said, “It’s worst at the begin- they do good work, their presence is car and sometimes for hours afterward? ning.” Lefty said, “Everybody’s got it.” I less central to food safety than it once I think it was because undressed and overheard Janet discussing her recent was. Visual and tactile inspection is goo"ng around, we no longer looked cortisone shot, which had been helpful important, but, as one inspector put it like government employees: GS-5s, but failed to alleviate the pain in her to me, “You don’t need shit to have GS-7s, and GS-9s. Dressed in hats and little "nger. Herb, I noticed, had a lot bacteria.” To a large degree, the detec- uniforms, we were the trained overseers of surgical scars on his right arm, and tion of invisible pathogens has now of a specialized industrial process. But his wrist didn’t look quite right. “Yeah, become the primary task. naked, we resembled something else: a had surgery to remove bone that had Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast built up in there,” he said. “Try ice.” 4 The USDA’s recall orders are technically Food Nation, told me that all the ma- voluntary. In practice, however, the govern- Hearing me quiz the others, Janet jor fast-food chains now have strict ment’s ability to persuade is powerful, and realized I was serious about the ques- standards for the levels of pathogens companies almost never decline. tion. “Have you tried wearing a wrist
REPORT 43
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 43 3/26/13 1:40 PM brace at night?” she asked. I hadn’t and Stan sniffed the air. “What’s that?” all four of my games. Stan’s team told her I didn’t see how that would “Bengay.” would now fall in the league standings. help, since my arms weren’t moving “Bengay?” He took his eyes off the Embarrassed, I apologized and decided much then, but she urged me to try one road and looked at me sideways. “Pussy!” to walk home. anyway. So that day after work, I set off This was my second appearance in It was 11:00 $.%. on a cold, clear to !nd a brace for my right wrist, the the pool league. The !rst had gone night. Bootleggers was the only place one that hurt the most. unexpectedly well, mostly because two open downtown, with all the parked I went to Columbus, everyone’s des- of my four opponents in the round- cars clustered in front of it. Though I tination when it came to consumer robin had the decency to self-destruct had to get up early, I felt in no particular choice. The Walgreens there sold !ve when shooting for the eight ball. So hurry to get home, so I walked around. kinds of braces, but two were out of Stan had called me back and even lent Like so many Nebraska small towns, stock. I bought one that looked sturdy me his extra cue. Schuyler had been very different when and proceeded to Walmart. The selec- The team was mainly inspectors: young: a place with aspirations to grow tion there was even larger, and in- Stan, Hank, and Rick, a supervisory bigger, but in the meantime to do cluded a more lightweight variety inspector at the Cargill grinding small right. The seat of Colfax Coun- with pink lining, just for women. plant—a hamburger factory—in Co- ty, Schuyler has a handsome four-story Clearly the demand for wrist braces lumbus. There was also a toothless old courthouse built in 1921 with terra- was substantial around here. I bought farmer, Eric, who lived a few miles out cotta and stone trim and a monument a second one and put it on the minute of town. He wore a dirty cap and Larry to World War I soldiers on its lawn. I got home. King glasses, and his jeans, barely hang- The post of!ce, two blocks away and The relief was almost immediate. I ing on to his ass, hadn’t been washed in almost twenty years younger, is less tried to understand why and concluded ages. Many of his comments seemed to prepossessing, but has high ceilings that the brace must ease pressure on be about “bitches,” but his lack of teeth and a WPA mural of wild horses in the the carpal tunnel, even while I was made them hard to understand. moonlight on one wall. sleeping. But other problems remained. The bar was busy—but lest I get the The Schuyler of old has been me- Gripping anything with my right hand wrong impression, my companions in- morialized by the town’s historical so- was painful, probably because I used formed me that it was one of only !ve ciety in a museum, located in an old that hand for "ipping livers: they were left out of thirty-one that had graced commercial building between the slippery and weighed upward of twen- the town in the 1970s and 1980s. The courthouse and the post of!ce. The ty pounds, so I had to grab each one clientele was non-Hispanic, with two museum is a large place, chilly in early hard. Other movements caused par- exceptions. Our opponents’ team in- winter, packed with memorabilia of ticularly sharp pain in my left elbow, cluded a Ford mechanic born in generations of German, Bohemian, which I guessed was the result of wield- Guatemala—he was new in town and and other immigrants. When I was ing the knife on heads. Everything was !lling in for a regular—and the bar- there, three elderly volunteers were worse in the morning, which made it tender himself was Hispanic. (Schuyler keeping it alive; the name of a fourth hard to twist the shower faucet or hold has one Hispanic bar, the Latino Club, had recently been whited out from a a cereal spoon. active mostly on weekends.) sign in the window. And yet I felt guilty complaining Between turns at the pool table, I The museum was seldom open, but about it, and even about acknowledg- chatted with the Guatemalan me- I’d gone three times, often to look ing it at first. Most workers had it chanic, and then got caught up in a through a collection of scrapbooks in much, much worse. Whatever motions conversation with a middle-aged guy three-ring binders. One was titled were causing my pain at the plant, I sitting at the bar. When I mentioned “Blizzards and Floods: Traumas That never had to perform them for more that I worked as a USDA inspector at Folks Want to Remember.” As I learned than seventy-!ve minutes straight— the pack, he asked, “Seven or nine?” from Nadine Beran, the curator, the that’s how long inspectors spent at a For a moment I was puzzled. Then I Platte River, more than a mile away, stint on Heads. By contrast, most regu- realized that he was asking my federal had repeatedly "ooded the very street lar Cargill workers, on the kill "oor GS number—in other words, how we were on. There were photos and and in Fab, had to repeat a single mo- much money I made. The fact was that newspaper articles showing submerged tion for an entire shift: eight hours, I was neither a GS-9 nor a GS-7 but a !elds, houses, and railroad tracks. with only two breaks. Turnover in the GS-5—a truly humble status for a !fty- I asked Beran what sorts of materi- meat industry is said to be extremely four-year-old. As a newcomer with no als she had on the meatpacking plant, high. Pain and these kinds of deep, previous meatpacking experience, I did Schuyler’s largest employer for more bloodless injuries have to be have the perfect excuse, but I felt odd- than forty years. I was particularly a main reason why. ly reluctant to share that with him. interested in the labor unrest that had Instead I said, “Seven,” which is what convulsed the town in the 1970s. Af- tan picked me up in his truck after I would be if I stuck it out for two years. ter poking around, Beran was able to dinnerS to give me a ride to the pool He still looked sorry for me. produce only a photo of the pack’s league at Bootleggers Bar & Grill. At My luck didn’t hold that night: de- groundbreaking ceremony in 1967 Walgreens that day I’d bought a tube of spite two brilliant, erratic beginnings, and a company brochure from the heat rub and worked it into both hands. I botched several easy shots and lost 1980s. She had no explanation for the
44 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 44 3/26/13 1:40 PM paucity of slaughterhouse stuff in the Bootleggers, became Tien da Chi chi- some kind of knot. “I live with it,” she otherwise over!owing museum. This hual co, a Latin grocery store named said, sounding only slightly less macho made me conclude that labor unrest after the little town in southern Mex- than Stan. Pain was part of the deal. is a trauma that folks want ico from which many early immigrants As I became more familiar with man- to forget. had come. The old Ben Franklin across aging it and gained a small degree of the street became Va ri eda des La Chi- mastery over the rest of the job, I began he meat workers had voted to quita, "lled with goods from Guate- to relax a bit. Tstrike in 1971 over wages and in sym- mala. The former location of Di dier’s, Some days I even got bored. I cer- pathy with strikers at other plants in still the largest supermarket in town, tainly wasn’t the only one: looking the area. The owners vowed to keep was around the corner and now hosted across the viscera table, more than the pack going with replacement the Latino Club. once I saw Lefty essentially fall asleep workers. Scabs and union members At times, new arrivals got the cold on his feet. He was so acclimated to the battled it out, shots were "red, and the shoulder, or worse. On March 4, 1995, routine that, between cutting up every National Guard closed Highway 30. nearly 600 workers who had reported to third pluck as it passed in front of him, There was friction in town as well, the pack for a special extra night shift he appeared to be taking a nap in six- particularly along B Street, home to discovered they’d been set up: the second increments. His eyelids would Bootleggers and several other bars. shift was a pretext for a raid by the Im- close, his mouth would sag open, and “Families were against families,” I was migration and Naturalization Service. then he’d snap to attention and reach told by Thom Greenwood, who later Exits were closed, guarded by armed for the next pluck. worked in the pack and is now a vice men, and 133 workers were arrested and I never could have managed that. president of Local 293 of the United soon deported, the majority to Mexico. But I must have fallen into some sort Food and Commercial Workers. “If Word of the raid spread quickly, and of semi comatose state the day the dead you were management and your broth- managers soon found themselves about dog appeared on the viscera table, or er wasn’t, you couldn’t talk to him.” seventy-"ve additional workers short. I would never have registered such “There was some people downtown (The feds later revealed that they had profound shock. who got thrown through some win- struck a deal with plant management: “What the fuck!” I blurted as the dows,” said Bob Blum. He was twenty- they would stage their raid outside of damp gray thing, a whippet or small six at the time of the strike, and had his regular hours and avoid disrupting pro- greyhound, presented itself in front of leg broken near B Street when he was duction if management would help lure me. It looked like my dog back in New struck by a car driven by non-union workers to the fake shift.) York, if he were gray and had just taken workers. “They just swerved over and Local 293, meanwhile, has not staged a bath and, well, drowned. Then I no- hit me. There was four in the car, I a major labor action in years. Some ticed the animal’s feet: there were no knew two of them.” Blum spent a month 1,300 people at the Schuy ler plant are toes, no claws, only little hooves. I in the hospital in traction, a month at still unionized. And Greenwood says pointed at it with my knife. home in a body cast, and “basically had the union sticks up for its members: “Fetus,” said Taylor, my trainer that to get a new knee put in.” Had he “Somebody gets screwed, we’ll take day. “Or embryo. Whatever.” pressed charges, sought redress? “I didn’t them all the way to court.” But strikes, “How often do you see those?” want to stir up nothing,” he told me. “I as he explains, are another thing: why “Oh, every once in a while. Usually get along with a couple of them now.” walk off the job to ensure some old- they’re still inside the uterus.” That was The next labor trauma, though timer’s vacation pay if you may lose when I realized that the sacs of varying much less violent, had a more profound your job the next week in a Homeland size that periodically passed before us, effect. Land O’Lakes, which owned the Security raid? Still, says Greenwood, usually with something lumpy within, plant in 1984, told workers that their the passage of time has strengthened were the wombs of pregnant cows. wages would be cut from $10.69, then the union’s hand, as the "rst wave of Supposedly the plant butchered only the standard rate across much of the Latino immigrants becomes more es- steers (castrated bulls) and heifers (fe- industry, to a dollar less. Schuy ler tablished in Schuy ler: “A lot of them male cows that have not borne a calf). wasn’t the only place this was happen- are staying put. They’ve become citi- But clearly the screening system was ing; IBP, a major beef producer, went zens, they’re second-generation, and so less than perfect. The sight of the fetus "rst, and its competitors all followed tomorrow means something reminded me of the pro-life billboards suit. But when workers in Schuy ler re- for them now.” I’d seen along the highway, equating fused to accept this cut, the plant was abortion to murder. closed. And when it reopened eighteen s I entered my second month at When I asked Doc Barbera about months later, it was with a new owner CargillA Meat Solutions, I "nally was the fetus, he told me they were ex- and no union, and the wage had been able to keep my knife sharp (most of tremely valuable. “They send them to reduced not just by one dollar an hour the time, anyway). And aided by pain- a special room and then take out their but by $2.50. killers, I tended not to feel the hurt in blood,” he said. Fetal bovine serum, I Some workers went back, tails be- my arms after mid morning. Yet it later learned, is prized by biotechnology tween their legs. Others left town. scared me to push through it every day. labs, which use it for in vitro cell cul- Meanwhile, Schuy ler changed. Clark- Carolina showed me a painful lump ture, and can sell for $500 per liter. son TV & Appliance, the store next to that had developed on her forearm, I wasn’t bored for the rest of the day.
46 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MAY 2013 REPORT 47
Conover Report Final 10.indd_0325 46 3/25/13 9:29 AM ORTRAIT FOR KIN D L E A P Lefty had looked vaguely amused at my shock—he appreciated anything that helped the time go by. Whereas OF THE ARTIST Stan favored the off-color joke, Lefty concocted more dramatic high jinks to keep his brain alive. On Heads, for AS A WOMAN instance, he sometimes cut an eyeball from its socket and tried bouncing it off the "oor, the wall, and back into A new Kindle eBook featuring his hand. At the viscera table, he’d sometimes spy a swollen ovary—they 21st-century women’s fiction could present as a pellucid blue, the from the pages of Harper’s A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A WOMAN size of a softball—and launch it into 21st-Century Women’s Fiction from Magazine, including works by the air toward somebody he knew. the Pages of Harper’s Magazine His most notorious prank, though, I’d already been warned about. More than once, in his trusted role as a se- Rebecca Evanhoe • Rivka Galchen nior inspector, Lefty had suggested that a trainee slice into a severely swollen abscess—the kind that would burst open when nicked, covering the Joyce Carol Oates • Deb Olin Unferth trainee with pus. But as it happened, I accomplished this on my own. I was on Heads, slicing without thinking, when I set off a small explosion. Sud- denly I was covered with slime the www.amazon.com/kindle color of key-lime-pie #lling, aghast at the putrescence of it. The four inspec- Kindle and the Amazon Kindle logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. tors upstream paused to take it in. Two were mirthful, two disgusted. “Oh my God,” I said. I wiped my face on my sleeve, then grabbed a ST handful of paper towels and started WORLD’S 1 trying to clean myself off. “You know what?” said Peter, the supervisor who happened to be work- SELF-FEEDING ing next to me. “Don’t even bother.” He sti"ed a grin. “Go to the locker CHIPPER FOR HOMEOWNERS! room and change. We’ll cover for you.” I thanked him and apologized. Just load a DR® RAPID-FEED™ CHIPPER, step back, “Don’t feel bad,” he replied, #nally * allowing himself a chortle. “It happens and watch it chip branches FREE SHIPPING For a Limited Time to everybody at least once. up to 5½" thick! *SOME LIMITATIONS APPLY. You’re a real inspector now.” SELF-FEEDING saves time and energy. Most branches can Other aspects of the pack gradu- be dropped into the hopper and will self-feed, instead of you ally became less mysterious to me. I saw having to force-feed them. how the guy with the giant metal box was actually swapping out dull knives CHIP BRANCHES UP TO 5-1/2" THICK with powerful engines up to 18 HP. for sharp ones. How the different sirens that sounded throughout the day had PRO-SPEC™ CHIPPER KNIFE is made of forged alloy steel, different meanings, summoning differ- making it exceptionally strong with an excellent ent supervisors. How those colored edge-holding ability. lightbulbs high on the ceiling re"ected TRACTOR OWNERS! the status of the line, and how the dif- 3-Point Hitch, tractor-mounted ferent colors of hard hats among Car- models also available.
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Conover Report Final 10.indd_0325 47 3/25/13 9:29 AM
KB EBIIRS> QB>J LC my !ngertips each morning, or that I could be getting quite a dose of phar- “Oh, like Mickey,” I said. TOFQBOP E>P MOLAR@BA > wore a brace at night to alleviate maceuticals with their beef. Mickey was a trimmer who often ?LLH VLRÁII ?B AFMMFKD carpal-tunnel pain. I knew how he felt You were never really in the clear worked on the Rail. He was very talk- FKQL CLO VB>OP about complainers. I also didn’t tell unless you went completely organic. ative. His daughter had married a him about my plan to write an Beyond that, it seems smart to avoid Mexican, he once told me, and they’d © FJ LRQLK >RQELO LC >II LRO article—but I will have before this ground beef. Most E. coli contamina- ended up moving in with him and his comes out, and I hope and suspect that tion comes out of grinding plants, wife. It had been hard, he said—he he will forgive me and let me buy him where the provenance of the meat can was one of the workers locked out in a meal next time we meet, because I be practically anywhere in the hemi- 1984 who had come back to a lower -0' .*!/# " ( owe him one. sphere and the standards are often wage. Mexicans, to him, were the em- Here is why: for weeks, Stan had lower. Grinding conceals almost all bodiment of all that had gone wrong: been wanting to take me to his favor- the sins. the decline in his salary, and the ite place for a steak, and suddenly it But our dinner wasn’t going to be transformation for the worse of his was now or never. Slaughterhouse about hamburger. Stan said the res- beloved Schuyler. Á work didn’t seem to turn any inspec- taurant was out of town, and I found For a long time, he had been very OBC>@B ?V LV ILRKQ O tors away from eating meat (one man no trace of it on Google or Yelp or angry. If he saw a Mexican walking I met who had worked in a hot-dog anywhere else: in rural Nebraska, into town from the plant, he would factory still ate hot dogs). And if fresh- thank God, it’s still possible to get off refuse to pick him up: “I’d say, ‘Go ness is a virtue in beef, you couldn’t the e-grid. ahead, get frostbite, die!’” But that was RIBP LC QEB >JB EB get any fresher than “hanging ten- Because I’d like to keep it that way, I then. “Now, if I know them, I’d help,” BPQ MLOQP OFQFKD COLJ ders”: slender strips of meat cut from a will not name the restaurant or its loca- he said. “And they’d help me.” A key carcass on the Rail, placed in a ziplock tion here. I will say that it was in one moment in the transformation had >OMBOÁP >D>WFKB RK@LS¦ bag with spices, cooked in a sanitizer, of those little Nebraska towns that time been the arrival of his granddaughter. BOP CRKKV QLR@EFKD BU@FQ¦ and discreetly shared with all and sun- forgot. The roads were unpaved, the Stan said it was the same for him. FKD FKQOFDRFKD PQLOFBP LC QEB dry during breaks. brick schoolhouse was abandoned; ap- “Sure, we were a little racist before. PMLOQFKD IFCB ?LQE MOLCBP¦ I !gured Stan would know a good parently there had been a "ood. Main But Mickey and me don’t let nobody steak when he saw one, and part of me Street had no streetlights, and the only say the B-word. We say ‘beaner baby’ PFLK>I >KA >J>QBRO EBPB really wanted to go. We scheduled it business showing any sign of life was among ourselves, but that’s because BPP>VP PELT QE>Q ELT TB for the night before I was to leave our steak house. But it was roomy, with people know how we really feel.” MI>V >KA TOFQB >?LRQ PMLOQP Schuyler. Stan and his wife, Josephine, a long bar, two TVs going, a pool table, And so the heartland changes. picked me up at dusk in their SUV and and an area for dining. The meals arrived. I’ve never been OB^B@QP >KA @BIB?O>QBP LRO pointed me to a seat in back with a I’d finished two beers before we a particular fan of rib eye, but from K>QFLKÁP @E>O>@QBO little cooler next to it. “Have yourself walked in. Stan and Josephine knew the moment I saw the steak and EFP @LIIB@QFLK FK@IRABP a beer,” said Stan, who already did. several people (and I actually knew a caught its aroma, my stomach felt “Thanks,” I said. I was grateful for guy from my !rst pool night), so it took !ne. I watched Stan and Josephine PLJB LC QEB JLPQ TBII¦HKLTK the beer because I was nervous. Al- a little while before we sat down and lift bites to their mouths and chew. I >KA OBPMB@QBA TOFQBOP LC though Stan didn’t know it, I hadn’t considered the menu. salivated. I lifted my knife and pushed QEB M>PQ @BKQROV FK@IRAFKD eaten any beef at all since the day I “Rib eyes, right?” Stan asked Jose- in my fork. started at the pack. Seeing the knocker phine, and she nodded. As he had The next ten or !fteen minutes were >OH T>FK LJ LICB at work was part of the problem. So was promised, the rib eye dinner was $14.95 an intense pleasure. It is hard to de- EFOIBV >@HPLK BTFP standing near the cattle as they were and came with Texas toast, potato, and scribe how good that steak was. I !n- >ME>J >OV >OQTOFDEQ herded up Temple Grandin’s doomsday salad. Stan ordered his medium, Jose- ished mine !rst. “You must have liked ramp. And then there were the heads, phine medium rare, and he asked for that,” said Stan. >OQIBQQ F>J>QQF BQB eyeballs intact, and the highly rational- the Dorothy Lynch—a local brand of “Wow. It was delicious.” UQEBIJ BLODB IFJMQLK ized industrial setting, the idea of a French dressing—on his salad. But meanwhile, I was thinking: >KA F@E LEBK powerful enterprise devoted to whole- I looked down the menu. My stom- What did this mean? What kind of sale killing. And if you believe that ach turned slightly. “I’ll have exactly witness was I, what kind of predator? I animals might have souls—sometimes what he ordered,” I told the waitress. know that going vegan is perhaps the AFQBA ?V >QQEBT QBSBKPLK I do—then you might relate to my We asked for beers all around, too. proper ending to my story, and truly, >KA F@E>BI >OQFK mental picture of a spiritual highway My phone was sitting on the table it’s the one I foresaw. But appetite is a spiraling upward from the knocking and Josephine asked if I had any pic- hard thing to control; a lifetime habit OABO QLA>V QEOLRDE room, through the ceiling of Cargill tures of my kids. I showed them. I’d doesn’t just go away. I do know that I TTTE>OMBOPLOD¥PQLOB¥ORIBPLCQEBD>JB Meat Solutions, and into bovine heav- seen a photo of a Hispanic girl on eat much less beef than I did before, R?IFPEBA ?V O>KHIFK NR>OB OBPP en, with a constant stream of cattle Stan’s locker door at work, and now I and I pay more for better stuff. I have ¦¦ ¦¦ arriving every day. asked about her. subtracted 90 percent of the ham- LCQ@LSBO That was the spiritual side of the “That’s my granddaughter,” said burger from my diet, and I now seek F R ANKLIN equation. There was also, on a more Stan proudly. “My little beaner baby.” meat that requires a knife to eat. It will SQUARE practical level, the question of whole- “Say what?” be better meat—and using the knife PRESS someness. What I’d seen on the viscera Josephine smiled. “My daughter from will mean I have to think about it, table made me suspect that consumers my !rst marriage married a Mexican.” every single bite.
FPQOF?RQBA QEOLRDE FAMLFKQ O>AB LLHP REPORT 49
Conover Report CX2.indd_0327 49 3/26/13 1:41 PM