A Change In The Meatpacking Industry

The meatpacking industry handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging and distribution of cattle and livestock. The first meatpacking business began in 1692, when John Pynchon of Springfield, Massachusetts began buying hogs and shipping the meat to Boston for the growing population and the provisioning ships. Meatpacking in its early days was a seasonal industry. Meatpackers packed meat through the winter, piled them on the ground outside and then sold them in the spring. Many technical and transportational improvements have pushed the development of meatpacking since then. The freezer allowed for bulk storage and railroad refrigerator cars allowed for meat to be transported across the nation. “The industry further profited by using an ever-increasing

For many years, meatpacking companies have used poor, and immigrant workers for their own gain. Meatpacking companies hire immigrants because they often are willing to work for lower wages and work under terrible conditions. Meatpacking companies also exploit the illegal status of many of their workers to keep them quiet about abuses (www.hrw.org). In addition, meatpacking companies are known to recruiting immigrants and low-income people. For example, a meatpacking firm named IBP has dispatched recruiting teams to poor communities throughout the United States, recruited refugees and asylum-seekers from nations such as Bosnia and Laos and has hired buses to import these workers from thousand of miles away (Schlosser 162). The exploitation and abuse of immigrants, poor and undocumented people is the reason why there should be a change in the meatpacking

According to Lance Compa, a labor rights researcher for Human Rights Watch, “meatpacking is the most dangerous job in America.” Compa also says, “dangerous conditions are cheaper for companies— and the government does next to nothing.” “The injury rate in a slaughterhouse is about three times higher than the rate in a typical American factory (Schlosser 172).” As stated in Fast Food Nation, “The ‘IBP revolution’ has been directly responsible for many of the hazards that meatpacking workers now face. One of the leading determinants of the injury rate at a slaughterhouse today is the speed of the disassembly line. The faster it runs, the more likely workers will get hurt.” The increasing of the speed of disassembly lines can be seen in almost every slaughterhouse. Old meatpacking plants use to slaughter about 50 cattle an hour. Now, meatpacking plants slaughter up to 400 cattle an hour. The increasing of the speed of disassembly lines are making slaughterhouses more dangerous. Recent OSHA inspections suggest injuries and illnesses are underreported. Researchers found that meatpacking companies under report injuries and illnesses in order to avoid higher costs and scrutiny (www.huffingtonpost.com). Workers fear that if they speak out about health and safety risks, they will lose their jobs. The many hazards that meatpackers face include: exposure