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Eric Schlosser Chapter 8 Summary

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Eric Schlosser begins chapter eight by sharing his experience of visiting one of America 's largest slaughterhouses. His tour starts from the end of the production line and as he continues all the way until the very beginning of the line details get even more vivid and graphic. While viewing the slaughterhouse, Schlosser takes note in the large amount of workers steadily doing in their work. Next, the book talks about the workforce at a slaughterhouse. Mentioning some of the gruesome jobs that people have to do in order to make a living for themselves. All of these jobs come with a high chance of getting injured. According to the book, injuries can range from, deep cuts to death. Despite the fact employees are already suffering from their …show more content…

The book states that most of these workers are undocumented immigrants. When cleaning a slaughterhouse, one must be very cautious. Schlosser also includes some accidents that happened to some people while on the job. After that Fast Food Nation begins to discuss the involvement of a federal agency named Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). According to the book, the government tried to lower the amount of inspections from this agency, resulting in a higher injury rate. IBP was one company that took advantage of this and decided to lie about the amount of injuries. This resulted in a federal investigation that ended with the company having to pay fines and put a new safety program in place. However, this didn’t prevent the company from deceiving its workers. The book tells us that one worker was lied by a company nurse about his injury and on top of that the he had to return to work. This led to another investigation that proved that many injured employees had to return to work on drastic measures. Although efforts were made by OSHA to help protect the workers from injuries, companies somehow always found a way to get around

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Timothy Pachirtat went undercover as a worker in an industrial slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska for five months to discover how the power of concealment plays a role in how the meat we consume is processed. Pachirtat worked in three different positions during his time at the slaughterhouse. The first was in the cooler as a liver hanger, the next was pushing the live cattle into the knocking box, which begins the cow’s gruesome journey on the line, and finally he made his way to a quality control worker. Each job is a part of the 121 jobs that make up the production line. The book, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight, gives us an insight in to what goes on behind the closed doors of a slaughterhouse.

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The company failed to ensure that the walls of the excavation be sloped or supported as required by regulation. 3. Why was it “unavailing R. Williams to argue that employees must take greater care to avoid placing themselves in harm’s way”? What role, if any, should employees’ actions have in determining liability under the OSH Act? According to our text, a claim like this misconstrues the purpose of the OSHA safety standards.

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Some troubles that surface during this time in the meat packing plants are the use of spoiled, dirty or rotten meat, poor wages for the workers there and the conditions of the working area. In the meat packing plants, there were no laws or rules to abide by for the cleanliness of the food. This caused several businesses to overlook what they thought was adequate for the consumers and sold them perished or rotting meat. In Upton Sinclair’s

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The book provided more distressing news of terrible practices in this industry taught to the workers so that more meat can be distributed for profit. “He wrote that workers would process dead, injured, and diseased animals after regular hours when no meat inspectors were around” (Constitutional Rights Foundation). The industry provides more meat for their customers purely for profit. This causes the industry to be influenced to sell its meat, no matter the condition it is in. The disgusting context of the conditions America’s meat was put through was brought to light, thanks to “The Jungle” and the customers of these businesses were

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The word dangerous is used to describe something that can cause harm to an individual: a dangerous job is just that. For the first time in the book, Schlosser focuses on what he considers the most dangerous job in the fast food industry: sanitation workers. He does this throughout chapter eight in the section “the worst”. Schlosser incorporates vivid descriptions of slaughter house conditions as well as accounts involving those affected by the lack of safety precautions to implicitly compare the similarities between sanitation workers of the slaughter house and the cattle that are also being murdered there. Schlosser’s main purpose for this section, and the chapter as a whole, is to emphasize the hazardous conditions that workers must endure

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The strongest analogy used to describe this is when comparing the description of the hogs coming through the slaughterhouse to the immigrants coming into America during the time of the novel. In the novel this event is described as, “brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day,” showing how many immigrants, represented by cattle, these factories would receive looking for work. Then there is the description of how the immigrants are used to there limits then disposed of after they have either been injured or just lost their job, this is shown when said, “They use everything about the hog except the squeal,” this represent how much of the immigrants use of before eventually firing them or losing their job. (27) With the description of how the businesses use the hogs as well as how indispensable the cattle are and that comparison with the immigrants shows how the immigrants are literal animals in the eyes of the

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Andy Dufresne is accused of murdering his wife and the guy she was sleeping with. He is sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary to serve his time. A couple of inmates made a bet on who would breakdown first out of the new group that just came in. That night there was a guy beaten to death because he started crying in his cell. Andy's first couple of days there he didn't talk to anyone and then you talk to Red.

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Revealing the harsh treatment of meatpacking workers and showing the reality of the disgusting conditions found in butchery shops to the public, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle became an enduring classic by American readers throughout the early twentieth century the prompted the later creation of the Federal Drug Administration. In the early 1900s, America was explosively transitioning from an agricultural society to a thriving manufacturing-based nation. As production demand in factories grew throughout the country, the work force needed to run those factories also expanded. A new type of demanding and dangerous work became prevalent throughout the nation, as immigrants coming into the “Land of Opportunity” found themselves desperate

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In the early 1900s, food safety was an incredibly unfamiliar and overlooked part of America’s food industry. Written by muckraker Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, was a controversial novel that depicted the harsh living and working conditions of immigrants working in the food industry. After the release of The Jungle, thousands of meat-eating Americans were horrified at what had been happening in factories. Disgusting yet accurate details presented in The Jungle were the basis for the creation of laws to stop food production from becoming so unsanitary.

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The Out of Many textbook discusses the history of America. A huge part of the history in America is industrialization. Chapter 19 of the textbook talks about the industrial city in which The Jungle by Upton Sinclair opens the realities factory life and work in the early 1900’s. The Jungle tells about the lives of the workers in factories, specifically meat, and how harsh and disgusting their work really was. The topic of industrial cities and their living and working conditions from the Out of Many textbook is weaved in The Jungle .

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Although it may seem that the meat packing industry is still in turmoil because of their unwillingness to make known what foods have Genetically Modified organisms present, the meat packing industry was much worse during the 1900’s because of the unsafe working conditions, and uncleanliness of the food. Body 1: The meat packing industry’s working conditions were much worse in the 1900’s than they are today. In the novel The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, working conditions were horrible for immigrants who were employed in these factories. People in these factories were worked very hard and used up till they could not work anymore. In the novel Jurgis broke his ankle because of the unsafe

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During the 1900’s working conditions were undeniably horrible. In Packingtown everyday got more difficult as the days went on. In the meat packing business things were supposed to be done quick. Inside the factories packing, chopping, inspecting and people actions didn’t mix. Not only did the people in the factories suffered, the people outside of the factory also suffered.

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The American workplace before the Progressive Era was an abysmal and dangerous environment. Safety measures that, today, we would think of as obvious were not mandatory before the reforms began. After major disasters like the Triangle Factory fire, in which over a hundred women were killed, reforms were put into place that put more emphasis on safety in the workplace. These changes included basic things like readily available fire extinguishers and access to emergency exits.

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The Jungle In the literary work, The Jungle, the author, Upton Sinclair makes a commentary on the deceitful and dark truth of the American dream. This was achieved by using the canned meat that was produced in Packingtown as a symbol to represent the dream that all the immigrants had about their new lives in America. As the story progresses, the reader, along with the protagonist, Jurgis will discover that the American dream lies cloaked behind a shroud of beautiful lies that masks the vile truths that are the American dream and the canned “beef” processed by the corrupt meat business in Packingtown.

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But alas, most workers were in dangerous jobs, and a lot were hurt or killed. Working conditions were so bad, that labor organizations were formed, and strikes and protests began to have the government to step in and help the average american. Paragraph 2: With urbanization, corporations and companies looked for ways to cut corners, or increase their profit margin. This lead to some safety issues.

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