The meat packing industry handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock to the fast food industry. These industries hold significant value in the United States, employing more than half a million people. The meat industry holds the nations largest agricultural sector and sales of meat and exceeds over 100 billion dollars a year. The meat packing industry treats their employees with inhumane work conditions and unfair wages in the United States, most companies go to great extend to hide these truths.
Upton Sinclair wrote a book from the early 1900’s called The Jungle. The book is centered around a family who immigrated to America. The family goes through a lot of hardships and troubles during the industrialization era. Life back then was hard for the average person. Most people did not have much money to buy food and necessities, and many lived in rural areas, mostly immigrants. Industrialization upgraded machines, but downgraded people’s health due to more pollutants getting put into the air. Along with this there were very poor working conditions that decreased people’s health. Upton Sinclair showed that industries should have safer and more sanitary working conditions before employing people to work and distributing their product, in order to decrease the amount of injuries and illnesses, in The Jungle.
Intro: When people eat food they do not think about what is in it, or how it is made. The only thing people care about is what the food tastes like and how much they get. During the 1900’s the meat packing industry had not regulations of any kind. All that mattered to the industry was that they made as much money as possible with as little expenditure as possible. During this times people were often made sick and died either from working conditions or poor food quality. 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.
Feeding animals, corn is not healthy for anybody, this process only affects the animal's ability to grow at their own pace. In Northern America, one particular Hispanic family tree, 70% of their family members are affected with both type one and type two diabetes, which can be associated with corn. A Hispanic family member changed the way he ate by becoming vegan. One of his main reasons was to stay healthy which meant cutting corn out of his diet. Emphasized in the film, Food inc. and in the novel Omnivore's Dilemma; corn can be easily sold and bought for a cheap price in the U.S. Many producers split the natural process in half by teaching and forcing the animals to eat corn, which fattens them up quicker than if they were eating food
“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie” (Upton Sinclair).The revolutionary figure that will be addressed in this essay is the one and only Upton Sinclair. Through most of his life, starting from the age of 14, Sinclair was invested in voicing his opinions through fiction. He did this by taking a real-life issue and integrating it into the plot of his literature while a point of view in that literature is given to a fictional character representing something or someone related to the real-life issue. Although Upton Sinclair didn’t intend to, he improved the meat-packing industry’s cleanliness and ethics by revealing unethical practices and being
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.
Throughout American history, propaganda pieces have been used to sway the public opinion on one matter or another. The famous Federalist Papers were used to sway the early American public to ratify the Constitution. The Civil War also heavily relied on propaganda to recruit soldiers and boost morale. At the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was written as a propaganda piece on socialism, however, it was remembered for its cometary on the ethics of the meat packing industry. Although its goal of turning America into a socialist society was forgotten, it served as one of the most efficient propaganda pieces on the meat packing industry. A century later the documentary Food, Inc. was produced for the same purpose of drawing attention to the food industry as a whole. Although monopolies on the meat industry have increased after being broken up and food workers treatment is similar to those in The Jungle, there are now more government regulations in place, ensuring food safety to a
In the United States, according to the North American Meat Institute, the average man will consume about 6.9 oz of meat in a day, while a women will consume about 4.4 oz. Meat companies in America produced 25.8 billion pounds of beef and 38.4 pounds of chicken just in 2013 alone. People walk into grocery stores and purchase meat but never think twice about the environment their food, or the workers that handle the animals, were in. Upton Sinclair exposed the industry with “The Jungle” in 1906, people were now fully aware of what was sometimes in the meat, this lead to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Therefore, once the 1980s came along, companies relocated to rural areas and became a non-union workforce. Not only were unions not allowed
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Progressive reformers worked to improve the social, political, and economic problems in American society. Throughout this time, muckrakers helped reformers by revealing injustices to Americans through journalism, books, campaigns, photographs, and political cartoons. Poor working conditions, low quality of consumer products, and inferior democracy were present in American life during the Progressive Era; reforms such as state actions, the Meat Inspection Act, and Direct Primary helped to eliminate these corruptions.
“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie” (Upton Sinclair). A revolutionary figure that will be addressed in this essay is the one and only Upton Sinclair. Through most of his life, starting from the age of 14, Sinclair was invested in voicing his opinions through fiction (Badertscher). He did this by taking a real-life issue and integrating it into the plot of his literature while a point of view in that literature is given to a fictional character representing something or someone related to the real-life issue (“Upton Sinclair’s”). Although Upton Sinclair didn’t intend to, he improved the meatpacking industry’s cleanliness and ethics by revealing
Eric Schlosser uses logos to convince readers that American fast-food made climatic influences on the spread of diseases. Eric Schlosser writes, “ In about 4 percent of reported E. coli 0157:H7 cases, the Shiga toxins enter the bloodstream causing hemolytic uremic syndrome ( HUS), which can lead to kidney failure, anemia, internal bleeding, and the destruction of vital organs. The Shiga toxins can cause seizures, neurological damage, and strokes. About 5 percent of the children who develop HUS are killed by it. Those who survive are often left with permanent disabilities, such as blindness or brain damage. Children under the age of five, the elderly, and people with impaired immune system are the most likely to suffer from illnesses caused by E. coli 0157:H7. The pathogen is now the leading cause of kidney failure among the children in the United States.” The use of logos in Schlosser’s book makes his declaration better because he is using reasonable facts and statistics. Logos makes Schlosser’s claim persuasive and serious. Nowadays, Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria is becoming a well-known threat that can be caught by consuming contaminated food (raw vegetables and certain raw meats) or water. Ethos makes his argument reasonable because he uses factual data which is an honest method to sway someone into making their view the same as yours.
Upton Sinclair published a novel describing how unsanitary the meat packing houses in Chicago were. His publication resulted in the enactment of legislations that established more stern inspections of meat processing and packing houses. However, The Jungle resulted into a different consequence from what Upton intended. This is because Upton aimed that the book would shed light on the difficulty of workers in meat industry but ended up back firing. In this regard, the public ignored the need to improve workers’ welfare as described in the book but instead became more sensitively aware of the awful unsanitary conditions in the meat industry. The book’s description of contaminated, rotten, and diseased meat upset the public and ignited the enactment of new food safety laws. However, there is still an ongoing debate on whether the conditions were as unsanitary as Upton depicted or had he exaggerated the problem?
Chapter 8 from the reading describes the working condition of the slaughterhouse. The meatpacking was known for the most dangerous job in America. People worked in the poor working condition where knives and machines can cut through their shiny steel armor. There are no windows, workers standing in the river of blood, drenched in blood, and women facing sexual harassment. The cleaning crew cleans the plant with a high-pressure hose that shoots a mixture of water and chlorine heated to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. The slaughterhouse fills up with fogs and workers can barely see. However, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections became less frequent after President Ronald Reagan elected and reducing OSHA’s authority. Therefore,
The documentary, Food Inc., takes a deeper look at the food industry and how it has changed over the years. The McDonald brothers played a huge part in changing the food industry forever. The brothers began to run their restaurant in a factory style. Each worker only had one specific job to do. Because the workers were assigned simple tasks, they were all paid a low wage and were easily replaced. The factory style restaurants had positive and negative sides. The positives were fast, good-tasting food. However, the negatives were much more prevalent. McDonalds became a chain restaurant that appeared all over the United States. The owners wanted their food to taste the same at all locations. This was achieved by purchasing all their meat and
Imagine walking through a building that is crammed from wall to wall with thousands of chickens, making so much noise because of how little room they have to move around. “Corpses that have been in the cages for so long that their bodies have become mummified” (Humane Society of the United States). Walking on a floor that is caked with so many flies. Seeing the unsanitary location where the food you serve your family is coming from. You have just walked through a factory farm.