Dear Chicago Tribune,
My name is Jurgis Rudkus. I am a Lithuanian immigrant who came to America with my wife, Ona. I’m writing this letter to inform you of what is going on in the meat packaging factories. I came to America to live out the American dream, but what I got was the reality of wage slavery. The working conditions are disgustingly horrible. Everyway we go to work in a worn out broken-down factory where meat is rotten and diseased. Meat packers were put into assembly line. More accurately a "disassembly line," requiring nearly 80 separate jobs from the killing of an animal to processing its meat for sale. "Killing gangs" held jobs like "knockers," "rippers," "leg breakers," and "gutters." The animal carcasses moved continuously
Schlosser describes the environment of the meat packing plants serving fast food companies in a startling straightforward narrative of his visit through a meat packing plant. He describes a brutal, and sometimes unsanitary environment. The rights of animals are a very broad and complex subject, but Schlosser touches on this as he describes the slaughterhouse floor. He describes animals in various states of disembowelment. Sometimes the animals were dead or stunned; sometimes they were thrashing about wildly in the last throws of death. The slaughter room floor was described as being covered with blood and feces. Employees worked at a furious pace to meet the day's quota. What bothered me most was the fact that this meat is not only prepared for fast food companies but also contracted out to serve our children's schools.
Our nation’s industrial farming has become more than just feeding people; it has become a way for the food industry to make more money as human population continues to grow. Jonathan Safran Foer in his book Eating Animals, illustrates the effects factory farming has had on animals meant for human consumption. Furthermore, Foer asks many questions to the reader on what will it take for us to change our ways before we say enough is enough. The questions individuals need to be asking themselves are: how do we deal with the problem of factory farming, and what can people do to help solve these issues? Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, also illustrates the animal abuse that goes unseen within the food industry as well as Bernard Rollin and Robert Desch in their article “Farm Factories”, both demonstrate what is wrong today with factory farming. Foer gives such examples of employees who work in slaughterhouses giving accounts of what goes on in the kill floors, and stories of employees who have witnessed thousands and thousands of cows going through the slaughter process alive (Animals 231). Namit Arora in the article “On Eating Animals”, as well as Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, both address some of the issues that animals face once they hit the kill floor. The food industry has transformed not only how people eat, but also the negative effects our climate endures as a result of factory farming as illustrated by Anna Lappe in “The Climate Crisis at the End
Factory Farming is an increasing industry in the United States. These large farms, which evidently appear to be more like slaughterhouses than the typical farms a person can imagine are located throughout the United States. These factory farms contain animals ranging from chickens, sheep, goats, cows, turkeys, and pigs, they also contain dairy products. The conditions for the animals and the employees of these factory farms are inhumane and vile. Life behind the walls of the factory farm is both unsanitary for the animals and the employees. Employees are forced to endure long hours and poor treatment. Animals in these conditions withstand living in cages and are forced to live in uninhabitable ways.
Simply stated, I am advocating for the spread of awareness of the inhumane treatments and violations made by workforces in the food industry. All lives are valuable and every living thing deserves to be treated with respect.
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
In the early twentieth century, at the height of the progressive movement, “Muckrakers” had uncovered many scandals and wrong doings in America, but none as big the scandals of Americas meatpacking industry. Rights and responsibilities were blatantly ignored by the industry in an attempt to turn out as much profit as possible. The meat packers did not care if poor working conditions led to sickness and death. They also did not care if the spoiled meat they sold was killing people. The following paper will discuss the many ways that rights and responsibilities were not being fulfilled by the meat packing industry.
Many rural workers, desperate for the insignificant waged provided in an industry that only union-organized by the largely ineffective and compliant United Food and Commercial Workers had a couple months before workers were burned out by the rapid pace and injurious work environment. Fink, who only worked for four months at Perry’s IBP plant, lasted longer than many of her coworkers. Since 1960, increased employment of nonwhites changed for the meatpacking industry. In Perry’s IBP plant in the early 1990’s, Fink explains that about one-third of the rural workers were Latino, about one-tenth were black, and lastly the other one-tenth Asian. The majority of these workers were not
This book shows the horrific working conditions and unsanitary conditions in Chicago's meatpacking industry. Sinclair's descriptions of conditions and procedures in the meatpacking plant led to subsequent reforms in food safety regulation. From the killing beds to the fertilizer plant, the meatpacking plant is not a place one would like to work at, it is a place of blistering cold and burning heat, a place where a man might accidentally fall and end up in the canned food. Sinclair uses descriptions of food and diseased meat to reveal the disregard capitalist owners have for the safety of American citizens. He also portrays the grotesque physical harm done to workers, who lose fingers, cut themselves and get blood poisoning, have their skin eroded by low pH acid, and lose limbs. Sinclair uses the industrialized brutality of the animals to symbolize the ultimate pain and discomfort the workers are
In the Labor Union, many workers advocated for improvements of working conditions. In an excerpt by Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” describes the disgustingness of meatpacking industry and the horrendous conditions the workers had to be in. Workers had to work at least 16 hours of labor a day under dreadful working conditions, while being paid low wages. On top of that, many workers would lose limbs while working; workers would lose their lives at work. The majority of the workers would be children, due to children not asking for high wages and they are able to get into the machines to work or fix them.
The men and women who work in the slaughterhouses are often low paid, poor immigrants, who have not completely learned English and are practically illiterate. These workers make a knife cut every two or three
Factory farms having locked doors only reinforces what some of us already suspect. That they are engaging in activities appalling to the public. Their secrecy is seemingly sustaining their business. Consumers’ ignorance of the meat production business only encourages inhumane animal husbandry. Foer says, “the power brokers of factory farming know that their business model depends on consumers not being able to see (or hear about) what they do.” (pg. 87) This is why we need to educate ourselves on this matter extensively and start actively demanding where our meat is coming from. Advocating for animal welfare is one way we can begin the process of changing or ultimately ending factory farming.
I am writing you in regards to the letter you had previously sent me. In your letter you implored me to show mercy to my slave, Onesimus, who had run away from me. I assume you know the punishment for runaway slaves. You see Paul it is all fine and good to say that I shouldn’t punish Onesimus because he is our brother in Christ, but at the same time you have to see where I’m coming from, I have plenty of slaves who would run away and convert to Christianity if it gave them a free pass from being executed. I can’t have all of my slaves leaving me because they saw that one of them got away with running away becauses he converted to the same religion which I follow, but I guess that that is a very egotistic way of looking at it.
“This is horrible! I can’t even watch this!” Those were my immediate thoughts the first time my eyes were opened to the inhumane animal cruelty on factory farms. Factory farming enables mass production to supply the demands of today’s society but also enables the cruel treatment of animals. We need to end the cruelty and abuse that these animals have to endure at the factory farms because it causes loss to the business, reduces the quality of the product produced, and endangers the health of those who buy the product. We can promote humane treatment of factory farm animals by prevention through education, by enforcing humane laws by being an example of humane animal treatment, and by donating and/or
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.
The suffering of the dogs is heart wrenching. Dogs bred for the meat trade possibly spend most of their lives in wire cages. They are often caged tightly and kept in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. They do not feel what walking on the ground is like, they don’t get to mingle with other dogs other than those cramped in cages beside them; they suffer summer heat and freezing winters outdoors; they are not given water or suitable food; they get no exercise; some even have their eardrums burst to prevent them from barking – every natural instinct they have is disturbed by the inhumane and tortuous conditions they must live under.