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May 2013 Issue [Report]

The Way of All Flesh

Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse

The cattle arrive in perforated silver trailers called cattle pots that let in wind and weather and vent out their hot breath and flatus. It’s hard to see inside a cattle pot. The drivers are in a hurry to unload and leave, and are always speeding by. (When I ask Lefty how meat gets bruised, he says, “You ever see how those guys drive?”) The trucks have come from feedlots, some nearby, some in western Nebraska, a few in Iowa. The plant slaughters about 5,100 cattle each day, and a standard double-decker cattle pot holds only about forty, so…

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is the author of The Routes of Man, Newjack, and Coyotes, among other books. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

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