Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: The USAricultural Industry

After many years had passed and Sinclair had met his demise, people still fought for the rights of the workers and made Sinclair’s dream a reality. Overall Sinclair’s actions began a new era of exposé journalism. Still this war on health and food sanitation continues to this day, Walsh explains, "Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us--ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans”

Thankfully there are others who have investigated this mass production of food and the truth behind how it’s made. Cohen talks about other who have followed in the footsteps of Sinclair, “Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair's work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat. Despite increasing public awareness, sustainable agriculture, while the fastest-growing sector of the food industry, remains a tiny enterprise: according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), less than 1% of American cropland is farmed organically” (Walsh 4). By bringing the problem into the homes of families through television and even on the Internet these people have begun a movement. To illustrate our modern agriculture Walsh discloses, “Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one

Within four decades there has been change, but perhaps in the wrong direction. Animals still live in confined areas with diseases and illnesses. The only change that has been made is that of the use of antibiotics, ammonia, and bleach to “purify” the meat. As is the saying you are what you eat could not be truer as it has been shown these chemicals added to our food (for the sake of high demand in meat and an ever higher demand for cheap goods) have caused harm to those consuming it. Cohen addresses this problem by adding, “But this is an unusually promising moment for food safety. Wide media attention was given to last fall’s spinach contamination, which killed three and injured more than 200 in 26 states, and to the Taco Bell food poisonings, which made dozens of people ill” (Cohen 10). As seen these chemicals don not completely remove the issue of diseases in our food. This is an example of how in modern day we still witness food (pollution? Naw but something like that). True nothing is perfect but corruption is ultimately never the solution. Cohen writes a lot on the subject of our food still being in danger of contamination and disease as he continues, “Sinclair awakened a nation not just to the dangers in the food supply, but to the central role government has to play in keeping it