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The Meatpacking Industry

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Recommended: Effects of animal agriculture

The transition from small family farming to large industrial farming took place about one hundred and thirty years ago. The overproduction of corn caused the cost of feed to decrease and the confinement of large numbers of animals in factories to increase. Due to the supply and demand of American consumers, factories found it more efficient to feed their cattle corn rather than grass. This change in diet has increased the amount of E. coli outbreaks in America. In 2014 the CDC reported, the Wolverine Packing Company recalled approximately 1.8 million pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E.coli. After certain policies were implemented and beef factory farms dominated beef production in the U.S., the amount of manure increased …show more content…

Army soldiers fighting in the Spanish American war. Even after the incident, no one was alarmed and food safety was not a concern for Americans. In 1906, Upton Sinclair published a book titled “The Jungle” where it states the conditions meatpacking workers were exposed to and how contaminated the meat was. “Soon after, the first Federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act were passed. After beef became more industrialized and science and technology advanced, antibiotics were found to help nourish cows but this did not allow food poisoning to vanish” (Harvest Public Media, …show more content…

coli is associated with eating ground beef, hamburger, at McDonald's Restaurant outlets in Oregon and Michigan. This was the first time that E. coli O157:H7 was linked to an outbreak” (Harvest Public Media, n.d.). In 1987, “One of the nation's more serious outbreaks of meat-borne illness occurs at two Utah institutions for the mentally ill. Twenty-two residents and 31 employees get sick after eating rare grilled hamburgers containing E coli” (Harvest Public Media, n.d.). At Jack in the Box, in 1993, four children died and 700 people got sick from an E.coli outbreak tied to beef served at the restaurant in the U.S. Even though the U.S. has worked to improve food safety, prevent foodborne illnesses, and save the environment, there are still cases of deaths and hazards caused by beef being reported (Harvest Public Media,

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Chapter 7 of Fast Food Nation discussed the starting of meatpacking industry and its downfalls. At first, Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) used the same principle as McDonald’s principle to make fast foods. IBP hired unskilled workers just to do simple and repeated work all day. However, competition with other companies made IBP low wages and health insurance options. This caused slaughterhouses to move West to gain cheap labor and land.

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Sinclair worked undercover in a meatpacking plant to gather information firsthand, before he began writing the book. Its influence on the labor practices and regulations governing the food industry cannot be understated. It tackles subjects as varied as the poor living conditions of the immigrants, exploitation of cheap labor by industrialists, and the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking plants and stockyards of Chicago. The descriptions of the disgusting processes that were conducted in the meatpacking plants made for shocking reading and turned the book into a bestseller. The President Teddy Roosevelt ordered an investigation into the lack of sanitation in meatpacking plants and caused the creation of legislation governing the food industry in the form of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906.

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Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

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One book, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, comprehensively exposed the horrors of meat packing plants. What he wrote was so startling, it caught the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. Sinclair detailed how diseased animal carcasses were mishandled in filthy factories, and the meat was often left lying around for days in vats contaminated with rat feces and poison. When they finally got around to packing the meat, it was treated with a plethora of chemicals, canned, and often mislabeled.

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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 book, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection describes how Upton Sinclair stated how he had hoped to draw his readers’ attention to “the conditions under which toilers get their bread,” and how there are, “corrupt federal meat inspectors, unsanitary slaughter houses, tubercular cattle, and the packers’ unscrupulous business practices”(Document 4). The authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle are expressing how meat factory workers are making terrible, unsanitary food. They’re pointing out that not even the meat inspectors care for the condition the meat is in. In other words, just as long as they’re making a profit, the inspectors could care less about the meat’s quality. However, consumer products soon took a turn for the better when the Meat Inspection Act was finally passed.

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Meat was the first food that triggered food-related federal laws. In the early 1900s there was a steep rise in the price of food, especially meat. Many people blamed the National Packing Co., which was created by the three major meat packing companies. Their monopoly allowed them the ability to control prices on the market with little competition. At this time, Adolph Smith wrote a series that detailed the unsanitary conditions in the Chicago meat packing plants in the medical journal The Lancet.

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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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Excerpts from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Document Analysis The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a renowned source of political fiction that pioneered the movement of food safety in the United States. The Jungle was first published in a socialist newspaper in 1905 and then later adapted into a novel in 1906 after popular demand. Sinclair initially wrote the exposé as a way to change the unfortunate circumstances of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions that were believed to be unacceptable for any laborer in the industry. Sinclair leaves short references of his political opinions in the novel in various locations throughout the text “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!”

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The book the jungle written by Upton Sinclair 1906 documents the meat processing industry. A quote from the book reads "there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage… The rats, [poisoned] bread and meat would go into the hoppers together" This quotation shows that there is radical change because it showed what the food industry was like before the reforms occurred and were put into place. It alerted quite a few people of the many unsanitary conditions and actions that placed consumers at risk of disease. Later that year, in 1906 the meat inspection act was passed by Congress.

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An article by PBS stated, “Today, America 's meat industry is the nation 's largest agricultural sector and sales of meat and poultry exceed $100 billion a year in the U.S.” This astounding statistics is one of many reasons why we should be more careful. A different article by UFCW identified that a whopping 20% of work injuries in the United States of America resulted within the meatpacking industry. As a country, we must strive to make this a safe environment to work in by reporting injures and hazards.

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Packers are causing this because USA beef goes more than other beef in the world. So for an example if they mix a Brazil cow with an United State cow they don't have to label what it is so that's where they make the money because people might think they are still getting USA beef, but really are getting USA beef and another country's beef. They also don't have to label the product being sold if it is salted, roasted, or smoked. How can they change that packers can't do this and farmers get what they should be making? Go to the Congress and get the Country's Origin back together that stops the packers to do this" (R-Calf).

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