In this episode of Unconfined, the Center for a Livable Future’s food system correspondent Leo Horrigan walks us through the world of biological farming, the soil food web, the unpaid labor done by billions of microbes on the daily (they need a better agent!), and how we could all save a lot of money and agita if we just let nature do its thing. It’s not enough to simply stop the loss of soil—we must regrow new soil, and we can do that using plants, fungi, and microbes in an ecological system that’s been doing pretty well without our help for billions of years.  

Debbie Berkowitz has been at the center of the vexed effort to ensure a safe workplace for poultry workers since her time as a union workplace-safety advocate in the early 1980s. In the Obama era, she served as a top official in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and has since emerged as a leading advocate and researcher on the topic. In this episode of Unconfined, she lays in stark detail all the ways the federal regulatory system has failed to live up to its obligation to ensure the safety of the people who produce America's favorite meat.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks agriculture as the third most dangerous industry to work in, after construction and transportation. In this episode of Unconfined, North Carolina-based journalist Christina Cooke paints a picture of how workers get injured, maimed, or die while working in facilities with large animals. Despite being trampled and gored, dying of asphyxiation in grain bins, or drowning in manure pits, these workers remain mostly invisible—and grossly under-protected by the agency that’s supposed to look out for their safety. Christina helps us understand what’s behind this deadly negligence. 

Every year, the average U.S. consumer polishes off about 100 pounds of chicken—the highest rate of any large country, and twice the level we consumed as recently as 1985. As our love affair with wings and nuggets continues to take flight, the workers behind this bounty remain stuck in a cycle of rock-bottom wages and staggering injury rates. In this episode of Unconfined, Tom talks to Magaly Licolli, co-founder of the Arkansas-based worker center Venceremos, about the creative ways workers are fighting to improve their lives in the home state of meat behemoth Tyson, which holds a 25 percent share of the U.S. chicken market. 

Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposed inhumane working conditions in the meatpacking industry, as well as disgusting details about the meat itself. Decades later, conditions and wages improved for meatpackers. Meatpacking became a proper middle-class job, alongside jobs in the automotive industry. But during the 1980s—the Reagan Era—union-busting reversed the trend. Workers in the meat industry, many of whom were unempowered immigrants, once again faced safety concerns and falling wages. They were bumped out of the middle class and back into The Jungle. In this Unconfined three-part series, CLF staffers Tom Philpott and Christine Grillo interview activists and journalists who are investigating the lack of protections for workers and doing something about it. 

Unconfined Podcast with Guest Chris Heaney

Back in the 1990s, a University of North Carolina epidemiologist named Steve Wing pursued what was then a novel idea: to find out the health effects of living, drinking water, and breathing near CAFOs, he didn’t just set up sensors and draw blood from nearby residents. Instead, he consulted them about what questions to ask, often listing them as co-authors on academic papers. In the decades since, he spearheaded a large body of research demonstrating the dire health effects, physical and mental, of living amid the hog industry’s stench and pollution. Wing died of cancer in 2016. One of his proteges, Johns Hopkins University professor Chris Heaney, has carried on in Wing’s tradition—and is now studying how biodigesters affect life in the area. In the final episode of our biogas series, Heaney breaks down the community-directed research, and updates us on his ongoing biodigester work.

Unconfined Podcast with Guest Patty Lovera

As we continue our series on the biogas boom in CAFO country, food policy expert Patty Lovera walks us through the costs and benefits of using anaerobic digestion to harvest methane from animal waste. At this point, there’s a “complex layer cake of federal subsidies” that are trying to make the process profitable, but it’s unclear whether this so-called renewable energy source is a viable market-based business

Unconfined Podcast with Guest Sherri White-Williamson

In the opening three episodes of Unconfined, we’re focusing on a topic that’s generating a lot of excitement among meat industry execs and concern among people who live in CAFO country: methane digesters. Tom and Christine open with a brief explainer: What are methane digesters, and how are they related to biogas and methane? Then we hear from environmental justice advocate Sherri White-Williamson, who grew up in eastern North Carolina and watched its transformation from a stronghold of small-scale African-American agrarianism to a global epicenter of industrial-scale hog production—and what it’s like on the ground to add methane digesters to the mix. 

Introducing Unconfined, the Podcast About Industrial Farm Animal Production. Unconfined Podcast 

US consumers enjoy access to a veritable cornucopia of meat. We consume an annual average of more than 220 pounds of chicken, pork, and beef per person—one of the highest rates of carnivory in history. What makes it possible is a factory-like model of meat production that took root in Midwestern stockyards in the late 19th century and boomed after World War II. For decades, the transnational meatpacking giants that dominate US production have been exporting this model to countries across the globe. But it's not all about just widely available burgers, tacos, and nuggets. What are the model's downsides—the impacts on communities, workers, ecosystems, and public health? And are there better ways to farm animals? In Unconfined Podcast, veteran meat industry observers and CLF staffers Tom Philpott and Christine Grillo dig into those questions, interviewing the researchers, community organizers, journalists, and farmers documenting or experiencing the ills of our dominant mode of meat agriculture—and those who are exploring alternatives.