Meat Industry In The 1900s

One of the greatest challenges during the Progressive Era was regulation of the deregulated health and food industries.This was a complicated problem that we do not have to face today due to the work of investigative journalist during the progressive era and today. This was a problem during the Progressive Era, because of the sanitation, the food and the medicine. Many journalist worked on revealing the disgusting and unsanitary side of Chicago’s problems of the meat packing industries during the Progressive Eras.

The beef industry is an important asset to United States agriculture as a whole. Over a million agricultural entities benefited from the sales of cattle and calves in the year 2000. Gross totals from sales of cattle and calves in 2000 totaled $40.76 billion accounting of 21% of all agricultural receipts making the beef sector the largest single agricultural enterprise. Direct and indirect employment in or related to the production and processing of beef supports over 1.4 million full-time-equivalent jobs in the US as well. Cattle are produced in all 50 states and their economic impact contributes to nearly every county in the nation and they are a significant economic driver (Lawerance and Otto, 2000).

The quality of the meat that is fed to children in school and at the fast food restaurants is, in some cases, horrendous. "The animals used to make about one quarter 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,

However, most experts say that overall meat is safer now than it's ever been. There is still a risk, though. For example, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, almost half of our meat and poultry contain Staphylococcus aureus, a type of bacteria that can cause serious infections as well as death (Andrew E. Waters). Here's what Lance B. Price, Ph.D., senior author of the study said about the bacteria, “We know that nearly half of our food supply's meat and poultry are contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those are multidrug resistant.” However, he goes on to say, “What we don't know [is] how often these transfer to people. We need more studies to quantify the public health impact (Gardner).” Furthermore, Pascal James Imperato, M.D., dean of the School of Public Health at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY said, “Numerous studies of this type done in other countries...have generally come up with the same findings, that multidrug-resistant S. aureus are present in a variety of animal meats.” "But, so far, no one has been able to draw a connection between the presence of those bacteria in meats and human illness (Gardner)." So, as one can see, even though S. aureus is

The cattle industry started to rise after the American civil war. This was due to the increase of cows in Texas as cows weren’t fenced in. A man called Joseph McCoy soon came up with the idea of the cow town of Abilene, where Northern buyers could meet up with Southern sellers where they were on equal footing and couldn’t be attacked by Indians. Abilene was built on the Kansas Pacific Railroad. This made it easier to transport cattle bought to the cities in the East like Chicago. By 1870 300,000 cattle were being bought and sold in Abilene. Cows that were sold in Texas for $5 could be sold for $40 in a cow town. This helped the cattle industry rise as it meant more people would sell their cows and gain profit. This then developed even further as the railroad was moved westward which developed other cow towns such as Dodge city and Kansas because it meant there was more places where you could gain more profit for selling your cows.

“The Jungle”portrays the harsh conditions of the Chicago meatpacking industry in the early 1900’s. Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite recently emigrated from Lithuania to Chicago in search of a better life. The conditions were the cause of Jurgis’s injury to his ankle, which led to his frustrating unemployment. Jurgis and Ona, a couple who planned on getting married, struggled throughout their time Chicago due the treatment of immigrants. Jurgis always prevailed and assured his wife that things would soon be better as he had believed in the American dream.

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

With newly implicated food and drug regulations, product hygiene and quality increased. In Document H, Neill Reynolds speaks of an experience at a meat factory during the Gilded Age, “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... damp and soggy, in dark, ill-ventilated rooms”. People during this time were just being fed dirty unknown pieces of meat. This could cause major illness and it was still being done.

It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of mean and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go in the hoppers together.”# There was nothing the packers would not do to make a profit, if meat went bad they would pickle it or make sausage out of it, “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 moldy and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.”# The Packers took no responsibilities for the sickness that these meats caused. It was not uncommon for people to die from sickness they had gotten from eating bad meat, this is also an issue in “The Jungle” when a young family member suddenly dies one morning, “it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning-which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned unfit for export.”# Disease was also a factor for the workers, as quoted from the book “Meat and Men “Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world.”# It was also not uncommon for people to fall into the vats and become lard. “The public revolted at the

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

Dead rats, infection diseases, and poison. These are only a few of the absolutely horrid things that would carelessly be thrown in by factory workers during the making and packaging process in the 1900s. People of that time period were completely unaware of how uncared for the meat that they were eating every day really was. Their food wasn’t cared for the way ours is today and it definitely wasn't inspected, therefore ending up with that unwanted rat chunk in your meat. The Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 really shaped the cycle our food before it hits stores today compared to the 1900s, by making it a law to have all equipment cleaned correctly, including the food, and making sure all food gets inspected before it goes to the mouths of buyers like you and me.

Believe it or not, there was a time when the food industry was 100% natural and free of man-made inventions. But, as population grew, so did the efforts to try and produce more food for a cheaper price. Caring for livestock during the 1900’s was not an easy task because, as everyone might know by now, animals are fragile and susceptible to many diseases which led to costly deaths that companies were not fond of. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that a group of scientists from the US, discovered that adding antibiotics in animal feed increased the growth rate of the livestock. By 2001, The Union of Concerned Scientists reported that nearly 90% of the antibiotics used in livestock were being used for non-therapeutic purposes, in other words, it was

Meat has been in our diet since the start of mankind. We eat meat everyday mindlessly. It is hard to avoid meat since it is everywhere we go. Meat is the majority of today’s food. There are very few vegetarian or vegan options in the food industry. Although, it has been growing more and more popular since it has become a lifestyle. The reason is to be the horrifying truth of today’s meat industry. For those who cannot bear the truth, pick up the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.

One is for the hogs and the other is for the large cattle. Three operational ponds are present in the slaughterhouse, the aerobic pond, anaerobic pond, and the facultative pond. And sludge drying bed.