Analysis Of Muuckraker Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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.

The Jungle follows a young Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkis and his teenage wife Ona. Together, the couple struggles to provide for themselves and for Ona’s family. Jurgis maintains a job

There were no food-related inspections or prerequisites that protected consumers from buying unhealthy or tainted meat. This lack of protection was alarming, as more than two-hundred diseases can be spread through food. There were also few laws that restricted the freedoms of business owners, which made it extremely easy for these owners to abuse their workers. The working conditions in most meat-plants were blatantly gruesome. There were usually no restrooms for the workers, so a corner or the floor were utilized as substitutes. The rooms were dark and musty, from a lack of windows. The machines had sharp parts made for crushing meat, which caused fingers and other body parts of workers to be severed and grinded into the meat. Rat infestations lead to rat droppings, rat poison, and rat corpses finding their way into the meat as well. Many of these factors caused food poisoning to reach its highest peak in United States history in the early 1900s. Fortunately, when Sinclair revealed these detestable aspects of the meat industry, thousands of progressive Americans demanded a

Fortunately, this revolutionary novel was a catalyst to the creation of various laws and agencies established to protect the safety of American consumers. The book was an eye-opening slap in the face to consumers who, unknowingly, were constantly being put in danger by the food they ate every night. The Jungle also revealed the horrors of working in these unsanitary meat plants. Fortunately, The Jungle has caused food safety to become a much more relevant and serious topic today, keeping consumers and workers safe from the dangers experienced inside the meat-packing factories of the