The meat industry has such a bad reputation that most of you probably assume that your chicken was dropped on the ground twice before arriving at the supermarket (once by accident, the second time because FUCK YOU). But, the truth is, the chicken police would shut us down for the day if anyone so much as shot one of the birds a dirty look.

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The "chicken police" is what we call the inspectors from the United States Department Of Agriculture (USDA), but never to their faces, because we have to see them every single day. Yeah, the USDA inspections aren't a once-in-a-month thing. By law, no plant can operate unless there is an inspector on site making sure our birds are so clean, they could work in a maternity ward. The end result is that all 16 of my production lines can get shut down if there is even a tiny bit of condensation on the ceiling.

Alice Welch / US Department Of Agriculture

Hey, we make people look pretty for their funerals, so why not here, too?

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I did the math on this once and discovered that having our lines closed costs the company about $48 for every second of downtime. That's why our cleaning crew puts crime-scene cleaners in the Tarantino Universe to shame. The night cleanup was especially grueling. As you can imagine, the place gets completely filthy after 16 hours of chicken dismemberment, but we have to have it spotless for the 5 a.m. USDA inspection. They would take a flashlight and look in every little nook and cranny of all the different machines. If there was just a little bit of chicken skin, goo, or tears left on a piece of equipment, the whole area had to be resanitized, and we wouldn't be able to start production for the day.