Walking me out of his office recently, my chiropractor asked me if I had any other questions. I said, “Yes. Can you shoot me?”

It’s the second time in a couple years that I’ve suffered through a pinched nerve in my neck. At worst, it feels like a hot knife stabbing from behind my ear down my right arm all the way to the thumb; at best, it feels an irritating, vibrating numbness. Once again, I’ve tried whatever pain killers I can, even though I know from experience they offer little if any relief — much less fix the actual problem, which is bad posture and a misshapen neck.

As with some issues paining the meat industry, there isn’t a silver bullet to magically solve them. It takes acceptance of faults and weaknesses, and a willingness to do the exercises and the hard work necessary to rebuild strength and achieve a pain-free level of health.

In this issue, we take up a couple of pain points recurring in the industry. One is salmonella, the ubiquitous bug that continues to escape the desired level of control afforded by the industry’s current preventive practices. The second is labor, and in particular the implications of implementing automation as the primary means of addressing it.

USDA’s proposal to declare salmonella an adulterant in raw, breaded poultry products has sure struck a nerve. Consider the agency’s earlier denial of a petition seeking the same for 31 strains of the pathogen and its discussion around identifying and focusing on the few of those strains most likely to cause illness.

It’s the same tack the USDA took toward E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef in the mid-90s following the watershed Jack in the Box outbreak, even if salmonella is the less virulent of the two bacterial species. The agency’s “zero tolerance” approach was unthinkable (and, as a matter of science, unachievable) then as it is now. But the beef industry put the arduous work in toward that end and, in the process, has since drastically reduced incidence of E. coli O157:H7.

Ever nagging the industry, too, is a strained labor force, a problem building over decades and pronounced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Increasing, in turn, has been the call for and adoption of automation and robotics. But that’s no easy fix, either.

As some of those on the forefront of such efforts say, the trademark layouts of U.S. slaughterhouses aren’t yet conducive to the fully automated treatment. Meanwhile, companies are challenged to account for a balance between mechanic and human assets, as the displacement of workers can widen the income gap and quality of life in their local communities. Still, some have figured out already how to have their automation and increase their human workforce, too.

And yet there is, as always, more work to do. As far as the beef industry has come in driving down E. coli O157:H7, for example, a painstaking amount of maintenance every day is required to keep and even improve upon that level of success.

Whatever compels a reckoning with such pains, be it a regulatory imposition or a function of macroeconomic trends, there is ultimately an opportunity to improve the current condition.

With a pinched nerve, a shot of cortisone (put the gun down) is the quick and easy remedy. When it wears off, though, the pain arises again. As I’ve learned and am now relearning, only consistent work at the structural health of the body will address it for the long term.

Editor's note: This article ran as the Editorial in the October issue of Meatingplace.

Bite the bullet

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