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Meat Inspection Act Research Paper

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Imagine a simplistic world without curiosity. No questions are asked, so no answers are given. Experiences like confusion and misunderstanding do not happen. A world like that is akin to mediocrity. That world would be a very bland world. Fortunately, the world today is nothing like that of the world described. Advancements in technology and culture were derived from curiosity. People wanted to know why things worked and how they could improve upon them to do better. Other occurrences came about from misunderstandings. One such example is the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 passed by President Roosevelt. “The law authorized inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering interstate and foreign commerce” (“BRIA”). This act came about due to the response from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Although mentioned, the horrors of the …show more content…

Composing mostly of immigrants, workers muscled through long brutal hours with little pay. However, it was not just men who worked, women and children also worked in these awful conditions. Workers faced the constant spread of disease, such as cholera and pneumonia, due to the tight spaces they all worked in together. Loosing a finger due to dermatoconiesis was also not uncommon. Dermatoconiesis is the technical term for an infection that is caused from overexposure to handling cold meat with bare hands (Cornwell). Workers dubbed it “pickle hands” (Cornwell) because pickling of the meats was the most common way of obtaining the infection. Yet another skin infection workers had to be wary of getting was tubular wart, which they called “cut worm” (Cornwell). “Cut worm came from handling hog intestines. Large warts grew rapidly on the workers hands and split open and developed into ulcers” (Cornwell). The workers still did not have gloves when this would occur, which would only further the contamination of meat

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