ipl-logo

Meat Inspection Act Of 1906: The United States Army Beef Scandal

504 Words3 Pages

Meat Inspection Act of 1906
The United States Army Beef Scandal, happened during the Spanish American war in 1886. Soldiers were supplied with toxic, rotten meats that they claimed smelled like an “embalmed dead body.” Nelson Miles, the commanding general of the U.S. army, spread word of the soldiers who died from food poisoning and the newspapers spread the term “embalmed beef.” Soldiers of the United States army usually would prepare their own food and supplies, but due to fighting in the Phillipines and Cuba they had to rely on food provided by the government. Cold, canned beef was all the soldiers were provided to eat and of course they complained over the quality of it. President Roosevelt called his troops babies for complaining about the meat, but after trying it himself he was repulsed. Some cans had been reported to contain maggots, pieces of rope, and toxic preservatives. …show more content…

According to Upton Sinclair’s, “The Jungle,”numerous types of meats were mixed together with no discretion. There were meats that were sold even after rotting, the meat covered in white mold. Meats were injected with toxic preservatives and chemicals. Meat was left on the ground, trampled and spit on and still sold. Rats, poop, dust, leaky roof water were all things that came into contact with the produced meat. And workers were dying from diseases spread from the rotting meats and rat refuse. After Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle,” many American citizens were disgusted and angered by the quality of the meat they were consuming. This led citizens to demand congress to consider a “Pure food and drug bill.” This bill however, did not contain rules for keeping the meat packing history clean and free of disease. So Roosevelt, disgusted by the factory conditions eventually passed the “Meat Inspection Act of 1906,” which forced meat packing factories to have higher standards of meat that are not spoiled and/or diseased by rats and

Show More
Related

  • Impact Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle On The Meat Factories During The Progressive Age

    1317 Words  | 6 Pages

    It also qualified to manufactured goods that were being distributed by factories in which were described in novel. Besides the Pure Food and Drug Act there had also been the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This action lead to the inspection of the animals in which if they were to consist of any epidemic or infection, it would be unapproved to manufacture. This brought a vast significance to United States for their was a change in the manufacturing and distribution of meats and

    Read More

  • Book Review Of Upton Sinclair On The Chicago Stockyards

    792 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sinclair sheds light on how unsanitary the meat processing industry was, using words to paint a mental picture in the minds of the reader leaving them with a bad taste in their mouths. This story eventually led to the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act after people went crazy reading what was described in the book. Although no specific facts were provided other than the contents in the book itself, it held true accounts of what the industry was like. Sinclair would speak of the rat poison being left close to the meat, or the use of the rotting meat to be sold. With this story people began to see the gruesome conditions by which their food was being handled.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Stories That Changed America By Carl Jensen

    1184 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    694 Words  | 3 Pages

    On the beginning of the XX century, the meatpacking industry was unregulated and incredibly dangerous. Simple habits, such as washing the hands and the use of hairnets were unknown. This, together with other unhealthy practices, contaminated the resultant meat with dirt, human hair and sweat. However, this was not the only issue concerning that industry. In the end, the meat appropriate for intake would be mixed with ruined meat and chemicals, as the author illustrates, “There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was mouldy and white—it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption” (Sinclair

    Read More

  • Summary Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    450 Words  | 2 Pages

    Upton Sinclair used the words, “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” to describe the reaction his novel, The Jungle received after publication. Sinclair was disappointed that the political point of his novel was overshadowed by the public’s outcry over food production. Sinclair originally intended to show how American factory workers were wrongfully treated but the people focused on the food safety. The Jungle illustrated the unsanitary and unethical standards of how meat was produced throughout factories in the United States. After Sinclair’s book was published the public started to demand new reforms in the meat industry.

    Read More

  • Upton Sinclair The Jungle Propaganda

    348 Words  | 2 Pages

    When Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle, a book about the terrible environment of the meat-packing factories in Chicago, he hoped to motivate reform in immigrant working conditions and promote socialism. Instead, what shocked readers the most was the sordid surroundings in which their future meals were prepared. Sinclair 's audience saw these conditions as a threat to themselves, and that energized reform in the meat-packing industry. What scared audiences the most was how real this threat was to their lives. As can be witnessed in the results of Sinclair 's crusade, the most effective propaganda is that which rouses the visceral survival instinct.

    Read More

  • American Author And Activist Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    763 Words  | 4 Pages

    The disgust and horror, associated with hot dogs, can be traced to the controversial meat packaging industry of the 1930’s. American Author and Activist Upton Sinclair recorded the horrors of the meat packaging in his novel, The Jungle. Graphically, Sinclair described: This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shovelled into carts, and the man who did the shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one - there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Muuckraker Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    834 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Women's Suffrage DBQ

    872 Words  | 4 Pages

    After I have read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, I have really believed that it time for us to change how the meat, especially sausage, is made. Why is it that the meat we eat can be made with animals, even rats, running over it? I believe that more regulation should be put on the owners so that the meat is clean, without “...meat that had tumbled out on the floor...where the workers had tramped and spit..and thousands of rats would race about it.” (Doc. D) This is not a job that people would want to work at just because of the disgust.

    Read More

  • Upton Sinclair's The Jungle And The Meatpacking Industry

    601 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Jungle was released to expose meatpacking industries’ ways of treating workers and meat. With this release, changes occurred. President Roosevelt urged Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This act required the Department of Agriculture to inspect every hog and steer whose carcass state lines. In other words, it required companies to pay to get their facilities and practices checked by an inspector to assure everything was being done correctly.

    Read More

  • 1900's Meat Packing Industry

    665 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Women's Problems During The Progressive Era

    831 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Progressive Era was a period of time, from 1890 to 1920, that people start believing that the society problem could be faded by providing a safe environment, good education and an efficient workplace. The people who wanted changes in the society were called Progressives. Most of them were well educated, journalist, they went to college. There were a lot of problems that people tried to fix them or improve them, most of them were fixed but other we are still trying to fix them. During this period there were a lot of issues and problems but there were some prominent ones, like: Women Suffrage, Temperance or Food and Health.

    Read More

  • Slaughterhouse In The 1900's

    302 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Chicago packers supplied food. They produced Tinned

    Read More

  • Meatpacking Workers In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1060 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Should Meat Industry Be Called The Jungle?

    423 Words  | 2 Pages

    Do you think that the meat industry still could be called “ The Jungle”? There are many animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens that are getting put in slaughterhouses. The animals that did get put in the slaughterhouses get tortured bad. They get hung and they go on conveyor belts and the get killed by the workers. All of these animals only get killed so us human can eat them.

    Read More

More about Meat Inspection Act Of 1906: The United States Army Beef Scandal

Open Document