Paradigmatic Meatpacking Factory Research Paper

Chapter 1- In this chapter I get an insight of the working environment in the eyes of Matthew Garcia an employee that experienced working at the factory. His named used in the text is not his real name, but made up in order to not reveal him. I can’t believe how some of these workers were in their cutting meat, while bleeding and having other accidents. Some of these people would cut their fingers off, it crazy thinking of how dangerous this job was to all these people during this time. Reading through the chapter its surprising finding out how fast paced the job was for little pay. The production increased tremendously from just processing 3 animals in one day to 4,000 in one day is mind blowing. I am shocked on how this system worked under the hands of George Hormel in the late eighteen hundreds. Many of these workers at QPP were getting ill doctors couldn’t find what they were diagnosed with until stating it was the speed of the lines. The increase in slaughtering was causing workers to catch diseases more frequent than before. These jobs were so

I genuinely got emotional when I first read this passage. When the author, Eric Schlosser visited a slaughterhouse in the High Plains, he describes the sight of cows being lead into the factory. These cows are lead up a ramp and into the factory to be knocked unconscious, then later slaughtered.

The workers that operated on the kill floor were to shovel the guts and fetuses down the hole in the floor. The workers under the kill floor would take the fetuses and use them for more meat. The meatpackers still process carcasses from cattle that died from sickness or injury. These cattle weren’t supposed to be processed and sold because these carcasses so the companies didn’t lose money off of those cattle (Sinclair, 1906). Canneries used many tricks to pass the spoiled meat into “edible” product. If a worker were to fall into one of the vats of chemicals and no one noticed their bodies could be processed with the meat as if it was cattle carcasses to make fertilizer or

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.

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

out of a job from illness, injuries, or even death. The working conditions of the slaughter and meat

June 24, 1838 near Sandwich, Massachusetts the man who was going to change the meatpacking industry forever was born. Gustavus Swift left school at the age of 14 and joined his older brother butcher’s shop which he was unhappy by the lack of advancement, Soon after he made the decision to move to Boston but his father loaned him $25 to stay and not leave his hometown. Swift stayed and used $19 out of the $25 is father loaned him to buy a heifer , slaughtered it, and sold the beef from door to door. By 1859 he had opened his first butcher shop in Eastham and from there his business began to grow. Although people saw Gustavus Swift as bad and a Robber Baron he also was a philanthropist in many ways.

The film Death on a Factory Farm, emphasizes on the politics of sight as a vital component in distance and concealment to establish power, laws, and social values within our society that allow human beings to inflict pain on livestock. This film focuses on Ken Wiles’ farm where pigs are being exploited on a daily basis and employees practice hanging as an alternative to euthanasia to kill sick sows. Although Pete, the undercover animal right’s investigator, tries to bring some justice to these pigs by collecting video footage of abuse, filth, disease, cannibalism, violence, death, and executions during his time of employment in Ken Wile’s farm the court fails to convict all defendants with the total of ten counts of animal cruelty because of

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

The use of language is an adequate manner of showing the reader the author’s point of view on a situation or topic without declaring it outright. Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser use effective diction to give the reader a sense of the horror that goes on within the industries and their emotions while being witness to it. When reading closely, it is obvious that the word choices of the authors are pushing the reader to also view these scenarios as horrific and inhumane. In Fast Food Nation, Schlosser writes, “On the kill floor, what I see no longer unfolds in a logical manner. It’s one strange image after another. A worker with a power saw slices cattle into halves as though they were two-by-fours, and then the halves swing by me into the cooler.” There are many keywords in this excerpt that paint an awful scene in the reader’s mind. Firstly and perhaps most importantly, using the term “kill floor” to describe the setting automatically gives a negative connotation. “Kill floor” is extremely cacophonous, and Schlosser purposefully did not choose to find a euphemistic counterpart to use instead; the reader can easily imagine what goes on at a “kill floor”. He also writes that the events unfolded in an “illogical manner”. This denotes that there is chaos and disorder within the factory, thus forcing the reader to conclude that the events occurring are doing so with no supervision and are possibly hazardous. Finally, Schlosser describes the employee’s work as slicing with a power saw and cutting the cattle in halves, which then swing by the cooler. Reading of something being sliced with a power saw gives the reader an instant image of a reckless cut through something with a mighty tool, which shows the

The aquarium of life is filled with all sorts of wonderful fish, each having its own purpose: clown fish to entertain, gold and neon tetras to illuminate, emperor plescostomas to rule, sharks to bite, bottom feeders to pick up the waste left behind and of course feeder fish, to be eaten. Unlike its expensive companions a feeder fish is only worth about 7.2 cents. It is kept in crowded, disease infested waters, sold at a pathetic price, and is made to sacrifice its body for the "common good."

Profit margins for slaughterhouses are very low. The faster the workers perform, the more profit comes in. If a person gets injured, the production line slows down with huge losses of profit. “The annual bonuses of plant foreman and supervisors are often based in part of the injury rate of their workers. Instead of creating a safer workplace, bonus schemes encourage

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.

The food system in the U.S. has changed a lot over these decades. In the past, people grew crops in their land and vegetables in their gardens. Today, the food system is dominated by the industrial farms and food companies. The industrial food system prevents us from knowing the food. We do not know where the food comes from, how it is produced, and what the conditions that animals live in are. Animals, such as cattle and chickens, are raised in concentrated feedlots where the conditions are terrible and the space is narrow. When it comes to the meatpacking, we do not know how the animals are slaughtered, gutted, and skinned. The operations are invisible and conducted behind walls. The industrial food system aims to produce more food faster and more cheaply. However, it hides lots of truths, such as its effect on consumers’ health, the environment, and the society. If there were more transparency in the food system, the inhumane practice of meatpacking would be reduced; the living conditions of animals would be improved; fewer fertilizers and pesticides would be used in agriculture; consumers would have the chance to see how the food is produced and make a wiser choice of what to eat; and the current industrial food system might be replaced.

First, back to where it says you can die, well your in a barn with spinning knives. Like it said in the article”, severe back pain, and shoulder injuries are caused by the slaughterhouse”. This shows that you can get hurt or die bye working here at the slaughterhouse. So you can see that is about where it said you can die or get hurt at the slaughterhouse.