Processing Food

My roommate gave me a link to this food processing video. The footage was taken from a chicken processing plant in Germany. It's nearly a 10-minute long video, and parts of it are graphic, but I'd encourage you to watch it, just so that you may see how mechanized our food processing has become. It becomes apparent in the video that raising chickens for food markets has become a mostly-automated process, with little direct human contact involved.


On a related note, I hope you have been following the local news story involving Quality Pork Processors in Austin, MN. Here's a link to a New York Times piece discussing the neurological disease 12 employees at the meat processing plant contracted after inhaling or ingesting aerosolized pig brains. Apparently, the QPP uses compressed air hoses to liquefy pigs' brains in the plant, and workers operating those hoses (or near the equipment) suffered from an "immunologic reaction" caused by the inhalation or ingestion of brain matter.