Meat Inspection Dbq

House of Representatives.” (History, Art and Archives) This federal law provided federal inspection of meat products and stopped the manufacture, sale, or transportation poisonous patent medicines. “Muckraking journalists had long reported on the appallingly unsanitary conditions of the country’s manufacturing plants, especially those in Chicago’s meat-packing industry.”( History, Art and Archives).

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.

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,

The lack of oversight in politics allowed industries to circumvent controversy and take advantage of the american people. Furthermore businesses such as the meat industry were able to sell unhealthy meat to the people. As well the meat industry provided unsanitary and harsh working conditions in which nobody could work in. For example in “The Jungle” Sinclair describes the horrific process in the meat industry and the reality of the business. In a meat packing factory a family has to deal with the harsh working conditions: “And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them” (160 Sinclair). The meatpackers revolting and toxic hygiene practice serves as a metaphor for the exploitive labor

Act (OSHA) of 1970 became law, the meat and meat products industry was designated by the

Factories did not have to meet any safety guidelines, causing the United States to have the worst working conditions out of any other country. Also the factories were definitely not the cleanest places to work. Since there was no one inspecting the meat at the time, low skilled laborers were forced to package meat that was spoiled or contaminated. This did not go well with human consumption.

There were no toilets, so human and rat excrement wound up in the meat, along with the rats themselves. These unsanitary details moved readers far more than the injustices inflicted on the workers. Other examples include the rechurning of rancid butter, the cutting of ice from polluted water and the doctoring of milk with formaldehyde. The average consumer was shocked to know that the “pure beef” was in fact contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Imagine

In “The Way of All Flesh” the author Ted Conover describes his experience working as an undercover USDA inspector in a meat packing plant. He shows how extremely grotesque the industry really is by providing numerous examples on the health and treatment of animals, the conditions of the meat, and the health and treatment of the employees. Conover shows the reader what it is really like in the slaughterhouse by using descriptive language. Throughout the article Conover brings up the treatment and the conditions the animals are put in. Conover supports his arguments by appealing to the reader’s emotions, by making the readers feel sympathetic for both the animals and workers.

     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.

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

B. Sinclair included a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were processed & how meat was piled on the floor before it was carried off.

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.

One case of animal abuse in the U.S. food industry is the Central Valley Meat Co, located in Hanford, California. Employees at the Hanford Slaughterhouse were caught on video killing cows violently and inhumanely, neglecting to render cows unconscious before slaughter, and other forms of abuse. Many of the cows appeared to be sick and unable to walk as well. Under federal rules, sick animals can’t be slaughtered for human consumption. (Nidever)

In an era where common people are perhaps more health-conscious than ever before, it is mainstream knowledge that meat treated with antibiotics and hormones may not be safe for consumption. Many chain restaurants, such as Chipotle, Chick-Fil-A, and now Subway, will only buy meat from non-antibiotic suppliers, in order to meet increasingly high consumer standards. However, less than fifty years ago, meat from antibiotic treated livestock was actually preferred. What triggered this change in the way consumers scrutinize their food? It can be largely attributed to the research of one Stanford biologist and former Commissioner of the FDA, Doctor Donald Kennedy. Through opening the medical community’s eyes to the potential dangers of antibiotic resistance, Donald Kennedy shed light on one of the most troubling phenomena of modern medicine. However, before he was a Harvard graduate and esteemed biologist, Kennedy was a child growing up like any other in a New York City stricken by the Great Depression.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle was that starting point when the new coming meat industry was exposed. It began the Meat Inspection Act and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Since meat was such in high of demands, farmers had to