When the recession took hold six years ago and consumers stopped eating high on the hog, the giant meatpacker Hormel Foods began ratcheting up production to meet a surge in demand for Spam, its low-cost processed pork product in the familiar blue tins. , the century-old expose of the meatpacking industry, author Ted Genoways details the impact of the production speedup on workers at the company's Midwest plants, the damage to water and soil, and the immigration-related conflicts that have arisen in towns where the industry holds sway.