CFIA Case Study Essay

Meat-producing companies try to hide the conditions in which their livestock are kept before being slaughtered. In Iowa, a bill called H.F.589 attempted to make it illegal to record videos and pictures at a farm without the facility owner's consent, and illegal to agree to work there to get a hold of undercover photos and videos of animal cruelty (Lin). Companies know that most people will be put off by seeing the acts that go on in order to provide inexpensive meat and dairy products that can be packaged and sold. People buy meat products to enjoy a tasty meal, but if the process involved in creating their food is untrustworthy, it could

The government did this through the Pure Food and Drug Act was one reform which helped public health by stopping the manufacturing of spoiled or misbranded items. Another successful reform which expanded consumer protection was the Meat Inspection Act passed in 1906. This act increased public health greatly and was passed due to Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle. The book brought forth the hidden secrets of how meat was processed and kept. Neill Reynolds Report shows how really bad the meat processing business was. The meat was usually rotten and was just placed on the dirty floor, where it was barely washed. (Document 2) His report tried to get the attention of the public and the government. It showed the horrors of how the meat packing industry was. The Meat Inspection Act was successful because it forced the meat packing industry to change its ways to meet the health conditions of the

This endeavor lead to the creation of the FDA and also the requirement that companies list what is going in the food that they are purchasing. Document B states the ill conditions meat was placed in prior to the chopping of the meat: “Meat scraps were also found being shoveled into receptacles from dirty floors where they were left to lie until again shoveled into barrels or into machines for chopping. These floors, it must be noted, were in most cases damp and soggy, in dark ill-ventilated rooms…”(Neill-Reynolds Report,

Before the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, meat processing plants and slaughterhouses were very unsanitary and dangerous places to work. There had been previous meat inspection acts, such as the Meat Inspection Act of 1890, but they were largely ineffective as they did not successfully regulate the industry (Rouse). Therefore, even if a person

Broadway, Michael; Cut to the Bone; How changes in meatpacking have created the most vulnerable worker in Alberta; Published in Vol 15, No 4, May 2012, pgs 36-41. Retrieved from

Meatpacking pertains to the raising, slaughtering, packaging and processing of livestock such as pigs, cows, and chickens. Prior to slaughter, animals are grown and fed. Food borne illness and pathogens still plague the meatpacking industry since the creation of meatpacking. The government plays a huge role in providing legislation and ensuring the safety of meat products and business. Although the government is meant to inspect and guarantee safety, many unlawful practices appear overlooked pertaining to the safety of meat for consumers. Meatpacking commenced thousands of years ago, and the safety of the meatpacking industry has been evaluated greatly since the industrial revolution in America. The history of the meatpacking

The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was an attempt to regulate the meatpacking industry and to assure consumers that the meat they were eating was safe. In brief, this act made compulsory the careful inspection of meat before its consummation, established sanitary standards for slaughterhouses and processing plants, and required continuous U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection of meat processing and packaging. Yet, the most important objectives set by the law are the prevention of adulterated or misbranded livestock and products from being commercialized and sold as food, and the making sure that meat and all its products are processed and prepared in the adequate sanitary and hygienic conditions (Reeves 35). Imported meat and its various

The dependence on meat and meat products in the United States is at an all-time high. Despite the great need for healthy and ethical meat, the procedures in meatpacking facilities have not been improved much in the past century. In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser outlines some of the most important facts and realities facing slaughterhouse workers today. The problems with the food can be fixed with chemicals and the like, but the value of human life cannot be improved without the influence of government actions. There are still such injustices to the workers as sexual harassment, injuries that go unnoticed, and horrific treatment of sanitation workers.

Answer: The purpose of the Act is to ensure the purity of food sold. Local councils and the Department of Health & Human Services administer the Act. Under the Act, food business owners are legally responsible to ensure that food sold to customers is safe and suitable to eat.

When fast food companies grew larger, they looked for faster and cheaper ways to obtain the food they would sell. They began to buy less of local farmers supplies, as they would ask for prices too high for them. Instead, they relied on companies who used pesticides on their crops, and hormones on their animals. These businesses produced more resources faster than the all natural local farmers. In their pursuit to be fast and efficient, some meat processing plants go too fast, and they accidentally do things like leave fecal matter in the digestive organs, which can contaminate the meat. To prevent and improve the status of the processed food that leaves meat processing facilities, Schlosser said, ¨Congress could create a single food safety agency that has sufficient authority to protect the public health¨, and I agree with this statement. When America has two government agencies who observe very similar fields, merging the two is a wonderful idea. Not only would it decrease inconsistency of data interpretation, but with better communication, this single agency could focus more on bettering the health of the food going to Americans and

The meat industry today is not what it was nearly a century ago. While improvements are thought to have been made, an ever changing society has brought upon new problems that have been piled on to the previously existing ones. While these problems are not like those found in The Jungle, they do parallel how by exposing what is going on in the meat industry; new regulations would be the answer to the noted problems. The increased demand for meat has made it a rushed mutated production instead of a means to raise livestock for consumers. Taking into consideration the demand for cheap meat that will be used for in quick and high demanded products such as frozen and fast food, this demand of meat has greatly skyrocketed. Animals whose sole

People today believe that the government is supposed to eliminate any possible danger from the food they consume, but that is not the case. In the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of The All-American Meal written by Eric Schlosser, he discusses numerous problems with food production. Some of these issues are discussed in the “Epilogue”, “What’s In Meat”, and “Most Dangerous Job” chapters where Schlosser elaborates on the government’s role and how workers are mistreated. In the article, “U.S. Meatpacking Under Fire: Human Rights Group Calls for Line Speed Reduction, ERGO Standards,” it explains how the working conditions in the meat packaging industry are hazardous and are violations of basic human rights. Although workers are affected by the government’s role in the food industry, consumers are affected as well. The consequences of the lack of governmental oversight, like food contamination and others, are discussed in the film Food Inc. “Escaping the Regulatory Net: Why Regulatory Reform Can Fail Consumers”, an academic journal written by Henry Rothstein, explains how “putting consumers first” is difficult for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to accomplish because with consumer’s interests that means regulatory reforms are most likely going to fail.

Contrary to what might have been thought, the main group that wanted tougher meat inspection laws were the major meat packers. J. Ogden Armour argued that the major packers favored government meat inspection on two major points. Firstly, Armour indicated that it would be commercially disadvantageous for a packer to evade government meat inspection as no packer could do interstate or export business without the seal of quality on it from the government. Furthermore, he explained that no major packer would accept meat from a minor packer except such meats had been inspected by the government. Armour’s second point was that government’s inspection created an assurance to the public that meats being purchased and consumed were safe.

This study had many significant findings that can be used to examine the geographic location of food production and the methods of food processing in a typical Canadian diet. The data from the observational study indicates that most of the food processing occurs in the country of food consumption – Canada. The study also indicates that most of the ingredients used in the food items of the subject were grown in the USA – a country in close proximity to the consumption country (Canada). Table 2 shows that most of the food processing occurred in Canada with about 63% (12/19) of all the processed food items processed here. It is important to note that out of the 54 food items consumed by the subject over the 3-day period, only 19 were processed

Company initiated “prepared-to-order” marketing for selling beef, a kind of group buying in 2007. Twice a week, a livestock farmer on the platform slaughtered a cow whose meat quality was of the highest degree certified