On Why Supporting the Meat Industry is Unethical: An Utilitarian Argument By Nobody of Consequence on Something of Consequence

In 1906, a book started taking the nation by storm. The book was titled The Jungle and it was written by Upton Sinclair, a muckraker who exposed corrupt government and business practices. He infiltrated Chicago meat packing industries and documented the exploited lives of the workers. However, more people were concerned with the unsanitary practices in the meat industry. This led to reforms such as the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Despite the reforms that have taken place over the past century, there are still many problems with the meat packing industry. It harms the workers, endangers the consumers, and has negative effects on the environment.

Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change; however, this fact goes unacknowledged by most people. Livestock and their byproducts produce monstrous amounts

Upton Sinclair is one of the most well known muckrakers from the Progressive Era(1890-1920). He was a writer who wrote about 100 books and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1904 he was sent to Chicago by the socialist newspaper,Appeal to Reason,to expose the meatpacking industry and created it into a novel called The Jungle. According to “Upton Sinclair's The Jungle:Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry” it states, ‘“Almost as an afterthought, Sinclair included a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were processed, doctored by chemicals, and mislabeled for sale to the public. He wrote that workers would process dead, injured, and diseased animals after regular hours when no meat inspectors were around. He explained how pork fat and beef scraps were canned and labeled as "potted chicken."’ This is what Sinclair would write about in The Jungle. It became very

In an eye opening novel entitled The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the author tells a story in which exposes the gut wrenching and shocking facts of what actually goes on in these food processing and meat packing factories in an urban Chicago during the early 1900s. Sinclair does a wonderful job at exposing what actually happened behind these factory doors and informs the reader of the unsanitary process in which animals were transformed into meat products. However when reading this novel one must take into consideration that Sinclair’s main concern was not only the disgusting products produced but the employees that produced them as

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a graphic and affecting account of the meat processing and butchering production in the 1900’s. The Jungle is a knowledgable analysis on the social, political, and economic affairs of the food industry and the quickly expanding capitalist society of the 20th century. Sinclair uses a impoverished immigrant family looking for a finer life to highlight the social and economic imbalances of work in the food system caused by capitalism. Even over a century later, The Jungle stays relevant as a reminder to customers and policymakers about the complex food system and the likelihood for exploitation of animals and workers. The collection of food manufacturing formed over a century ago built the bases of the present-day

Upton Sinclair was a famous novelist that exposed the appalling and unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry through his novel, The Jungle. "I aimed at the public's heart," he said in 1906 about The Jungle, "and by accident I hit it in the stomach." His involvement with socialism led to a writing assignment about the innocent workers in the meatpacking industry, eventually resulting in the best-selling novel The Jungle. Despite the revolting reality, Sinclair utilized his socialist background and language to express universal truths of the mistreatment of workers and the foul conditions of the meat packing industry.

While animal cruelty is the largest issue that arises from factory farming, there are also many other problems that stem from this type of production such as environmental impacts. With this type of food production, “modern animal agriculture puts an incredible strain on natural resources like land, water, and fossil fuel” (Factory Farming). This is causing non-reversible environmental damage such as contaminating water supplies and producing mass amounts of exhaust due to production. These practices are going unnoticed by both the government and the companies responsible. Laws and regulations for the environment are not doing their job and need to be changed in order to save the resources that future generations have a right to experience. The industry as a whole stand idly by as they destroy the environment by the practices they perform. This puts a major strain on the fight against environmental degradation by the lack of regard for conserving what is not the industries to ruin.

The excess of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere have led to a dramatic rise in the climate and the hottest recorded years the Earth has seen. To be specific, “the 25 warmest years on record have come since 1980 [and] the 10 warmest since global recordkeeping began in 1880 have come since 1996, (p 56)” which is nothing to boast about, seeing as this is also the largest population and most technology the Earth has ever seen. Moreover, in lecture, we went over the amount of greenhouse gases created solely by livestock and how being a society dependent of livestock for food is very negative. Livestock emit about 68% of all agriculturally produced methane(lecture) and methane counts for approximately 18% of greenhouse gases (p 57). That is not to say that livestock do not create a large amount; in fact, human-caused methane emissions are almost solely from agriculture. To combat this, Dr. Wailes proposed that instead of basing our diet on water-heavy crops and methane-emitting animals, we switch to much more sustainable foods. One example of this would be to eat bugs. Bugs contain much more protein by the pound and do not eat alfalfa, which is what causes cows and other livestock to emit greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Dr. Wailes also displayed a chart with three different “meals” which

Relevance: We all share the same planet, therefore, I believe it is vital to know the ways animal agriculture shapes our environment.

This article discusses how the consumption and production of meat and dairy is one of leading causes of habitat destruction and quick action needs to be taken to preserve biodiversity. The article analyzes the meat-eating trends in tropical regions of America, Asia, and Africa. It concludes that meat production rates are rapidly increasing, underlying that a 30-50% increase in the land will be needed by 2050 if these patterns continue. Bushmeat consumption in Africa and livestock consumption in China are outlined as special concerns. The main solution proposed is reforming the livestock industry by reducing demand and waste, replacing ecologically inefficient protein sources with better alternatives such as plants or fish, and reintegrate modern livestock production

Gone were the days when industrialization was the prime origin and a new age of economic boom in our country. This was a period where factories were established, provision of jobs being vastly increased for Americans, big machines and buildings built to accommodate and the exploit the opportunity and moment at hand. Due to this sudden improvement, food manufactures being the primary industry and instrumental in their clever ways; developed a way to profit by reducing workers, encouraged unsanitary habits and unscrupulous ways which resulted as a disastrous blow to the public. This bad habit in the food industry (primarily the meat factories) in late 1800s to early 1900s aroused one of the most controversial novel (expose) “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, and yet thrilling insight with details as to what was going on in the meat industry. Upton Sinclair describes the frightful and dangerous working conditions of one meat packing facility in Chicago, thus far these conditions were common to all facilities which led to laws that changed the bad patterns of these manufactures.

The book, The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair had a major impact on the way the world saw the American Meat Packing Industry. While Upton Sinclair originally intended to appeal to the public’s heart concerning the conditions and the treatment of workers, it was obvious that the book had more of an impact on the meat industry. The public was outraged by the stories of waste meat being canned as wholesome meat, workers falling into vats and being processed as lard, and dead animals being processed when the inspectors weren’t looking. Upton was quoted in saying, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” (Kantor 1976). The impact that this fictitious novel had, can still be seen today. After the outrage of hearing

The cultural axioms that we live by has created a lifestyle that is not sustainable for life itself. Kip Anderson’s documentary Cowspiracy informs about the overwhelming affect livestock production has on the environment. According to the film ninety one percent of deforestation on Earth is due to raising livestock. This makes it the primary contributor responsible for all environmental illnesses. This is due to the fact that methane gas, produced in cow farts, is twenty three times more harmful to the environment than regular carbon dioxide is.

The burning of fossil fuels for energy and agriculture are two of the biggest contributors to global warming, along with deforestation. Ruminant animals like cattle produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The livestock sector is responsible for about 37% of human-caused methane emissions, and about 65% of human nitrous oxide emissions.Also, nearly a third of biodiversity loss to date has been linked to animal agriculture. Further amplifying water and air pollution, global livestock produce seven to nine times more sewage than humans, most of which is left untreated.

The impacts of livestock on global climate change are important to the health of the ecosystem because it causes the average global temperature to increase. Livestock contributes to the majority of methane emitted into the atmosphere because of the feces it produces. The growing population increase is not helpful to this matter because as a result, a demand of food arises. This demand for food also includes the demand for livestock because it is appropriate for the human diet. “Meat production is to double from 229 million tonnes in [2000] to 465 million tonnes in 2050” (McMichael et al. 1259). The methane emission rate is bound to increase because it is “dependent upon the population size of the [livestock], their productivity, and [handling system]” (Jose et al. 3).