Dr. Grandin: Contemporary Issues In Agriculture

Related to this, is the invention of the first production line: a slaughter house. The slaughter house meant that meat could be cut, processed and packaged cheaply and efficiently and so lent itself to making the rancher more profit.

Mary Temple Grandin, also known as Temple Grandin was born August 29th, 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was younger she was different from the other children and they made that known. They called her a number of name but some are: "Retard" and "Tape recorder". Temple was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, where she had a lack of speech and sensitivity to touch. She has made a change not only for the cattle and pigs but for the slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

While I did not aim to create a slightly disturbing story, my sources guided the narrative. Dominic A. Pacyga’s Slaughterhouse: Chicago's Union Stock Yard and the World It Made influenced the unpleasant descriptions of slaughtering practices. His book details poor conditions in the slaughterhouses to highlight sanitation concerns as well as labor issues. The Jungle, while highly fictional, allowed me to see how the public viewed the stockyards in 1906 and why they pushed for higher regulation. Any additional sources provided context for the meat industry and enhanced the information that came from Pacyga and Sinclair.

In his journalistic investigation into the depths of industrial agriculture, Michael Pollan analyzes “what it is we’re eating, where it came from, how it found its way to our table, and what it really cost” in an effort to provide both himself and his readers with an educated answer to the surprisingly complex question of “what should we have for dinner?” (Pollan 411, 1). However, what appears as a noble attempt to develop a fuller understanding of the personal, social, and environmental implications of food choices soon reveals itself as a quest to justify Pollan’s own desire to continue eating meat despite its undeniable detriments to animals, human health, and the environment. Indeed, the mere title of Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma as well as his assertion in the book’s introduction that “omnivory offers the pleasures of variety,” exposes the author’s gustatory preferences that prompt him to ask which meat to eat, rather than if to eat meat at all (Pollan 4). This preemptive refusal, due to mere gastronomic pleasure, to consider methods of eating responsibly that do not involve meat renders Pollan’s investigative endeavor essentially meaningless why would he take the time and effort to thoroughly examine the consequences of his food choices if he vowed at the outset to not allow his discoveries to truly shift his eating habits? Why would he write an entire book delving into the minute details of industrialized food production only to advise himself and his audience

George was a very intelegent man. He recieved many awards in his lifetime. He ended his life as a world renowned agricultural chemist. 7

In the US today cattle are part of everyday culture. With more than 93 million cattle in the dairy and beef industry, and tens of thousands in the rodeo business, cattle are definitely a huge part. Lately, there has been many concerns with the bovine friends along with multiple misconceptions. Rodeos may look tough on animals, and todays society is not educated well enough on the beef and dairy industry. People don’t realize that these animals are happy, healthy, and very well cared for.

Every day we are surrounded by technology such as phones and computers. While we know that technology can help us to improve and advance our society, it still has a downfall. When daily tasks get easier, people get lazier. In Ray Bradbury’s, Fahrenheit 451, technology is everywhere; fast cars, interactive homes, mechanical hounds, and the parlor walls. Technology can be used to make life easier, they can emphasize human characteristics of distraction, censorship, and ignorance, which could be potentially harmful for society.

Mr. Carver was a man initially born into slavery with an identified birth place, who understood the concept of studying existed around one’s own culture, history, and own setting. Therefore, motivating George Washington Carver to establish the knowledge to gain a strategic that developed hundreds of products using peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes. Being a skillful student of the scientific study of plants. During the segregation period, George Washington Carver shaped the history amongst the conflict of cultural economics of agricultural scarcity during the 1900’s. Basically, permitting Mr. Carver to have a different perspective of equality for the underprivileged farmers which lead to promoting green politics. In addition, George Washington

Humans are the equivalent to animals in the meat industry for the purpose of profit. Jurgis tours the slaughterhouse. He describes the detachment in the work environment with the slaughtering and packaging of hogs. The hogs are not treated kindly or even thought of as animals just as sales. “There was a long line of hogs," being simultaneously "swung up and then another, and another squealing] and lifeblood ebbing away together.” (Sinclair 39) There is an orderly way to set up the slaughterhouse to distract the poor immigrants of the American lifestyle. The worker wants to give more to their family and add to their financial status even if it means being away from their home country. Businesses take advantage of workers valuing their work ethic more than the idea of being miserable at work so it is done continuously with no remorse. This social construct was built and implied because no one could protest against a life that helps them survive in the America 's capitalism. People and animals are

Back in the 1900s, the meat treatment was almost the worst it could get. The workers treated the meat like it was garbage. In Sinclair's book The Jungle he talks about how the meat was handled very vividly. He explains in his book how the meat packing business was a scam. The meat packing business was a scam because, like the farmers, only cared about the money they make. The meat taken out of the pickle was often sour. To take away the odor of the meat, they would run it with soda, then sell the sour, disgusting piece of meat to the free-lunch counters to be given away (Sinclair, 134). Sinclair stated in book that they sold their soiled meat just to make a quick buck and not caring about other people's health issues. Back then there was also a “Number Grade” on all meats. The lower the grade the more expensive and better treated that meat was. “...after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there was only Number One Grade” (Sinclair, 134). This quote is telling us that the entire meat industry was a scam because all they wanted to do was make money, even if it meant selling spoiled hams to its customers. The “Number Grades” made sure people knew that they were not going to buy and eat a spoiled ham. Without the “Number Grades” people were buying hams they may not have agreed to eat because they were spoiled and could harm their

eventually led to conflicts between the US and the Native American’s, with the conflict it made

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.

For hundreds of years meat production mainly consisted of rural family owned farms with small operations as a community working to provide animal products to local markets. This type of farming was simpler than industrial farming of today allowing for higher acreage, less animals, and a mixture of plants and vegetation to produce. The modern approach to farming practices today are very different than the wholesome past of free-range, happy animals. The brink of commercial agriculture has allowed for many opportunities in agricultural advancements reaping huge profits in the United States, creating a huge market for consumers with varieties of animal products to sustain. According to Robert P. Martin, Executive Director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, “The goal of agriculture then, as now, was to meet human demand for food, and as the population grew, early agriculturalists found new ways to increase yield, decrease costs of production, and sustain productivity. Over the centuries, improved agricultural methods brought about enormous yield gains, all to keep up with the needs of an ever-increasing human population. In the 18th century, for example, it took nearly five acres of land to feed one person for one year, whereas today it takes just half an acre

How does this effectively relay Pathos? If you did not know the resilience animals are capable of well now the audience does. To share disheartening facts of what is really happening in commercial agriculture it helps to understand a little of the back bone of the operations and to understand the difference that goes into producing food that isn’t tainted with toxins and poison. To reach people that don’t quite “get it” requires very basic stories to help them connect the dots and see what could be alternatives to modern consumerism. If people can’t relate to something they never change they continue with the same old. At the very least, this article provided thought and left people with options on how they choose to sustain their families.

As you start reading this essay create a new tab and follow this link http://www.adaptt.org/killcounter.html, return to this tab after finishing the essay. Most people do not know what actually occurs in a slaughterhouse because it is