[mumblemumble]

Those meat packages end up getting very different handling, because of the dry ice that's used to keep them cold. It's necessary to keep a careful track of the dry ice and know how much of it you're loading into a container, in order to avoid asphyxiating your colleagues. Most packages are just tossed along as quickly as possible, because there's a tight schedule to keep. But you have to temporarily slow way down when a package containing dry ice comes down the belt.

It's a little bit like that photographer's trick of packing a starter pistol with your camera equipment when flying, in order to ensure that the baggage crew is extra careful with your stuff.

Source: I used to schlep packages at a UPS hub.

[helldritch]

Just to clarify: the meat packages I ordered didn't use any dry ice. They provide two (standard) ice packs, one which is placed beneath the meat and one which is placed above the meat.

Because the polystyrene is so thick and they send so much ice, the ice was still fully frozen when I received it 42 hours after my order.

We've actually kept the polystyrene box and ice packs to reuse for picnic days and things like that.