When the recession took hold six years ago and consumers stopped eating high on the hog, Hormel Foods began ratcheting up production to meet a surge in demand for Spam, its low-cost processed pork product. Taking a leaf from Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," the century-old expose of the meatpacking industry, author Ted Genoways details the effect of the production speedup on workers at Midwest plants, the damage to water and soil, and the immigration-related conflicts that have arisen where the industry holds sway.