Critical Analysis: Slaughterhouse Labor
Critical Analysis: Slaughterhouse Labor
As Americans, we are often blinded by the food industry to think that what we are putting into our bodies is to fuel our bodies, not to profit major companies. However, the whole idea of food production is to make food for the general public in the quickest, easiest way possible. When producing a mass product, things must be done efficiently and effectively, regardless of who or what it is affecting. Major businesses try to get the most bang for their buck, and it often has high stakes for those involved in the hard labor of the food industry.
Many aspects of this industry have been explored in excerpts from “Fast Food Nation” and scenes from Food Inc., but something that particularly stood out to me was the way that the workers and animals in the slaughterhouses were treated. Workers are treated unfairly and put through unnecessary and unhealthy conditions. We get nearly all of our meat from these slaughterhouses, so it caught my attention that there are people that must work through these conditions in order to make a living, and animals that must lose their lives against their will. It made me think that while consumers are often blind to the ways in which their food is being made, it is incredibly crucial to have an understanding of the severity of poorly treated slaughterhouse workers and animals, because it is, after all, the food we are eating that comes out of the process. The ideas and arguments against the treatment of slaughterhouse workers and cattle were presented in the text in such a way that the reader is compelled to react. Because the houses were “far away from the strongholds of the nation’s labor unions” (164, Schlosser, 2002), they were able to get away with exposing both animals and workers to unhealthy and unsafe conditions without any major repercussions. The gruesome details of workers standing in pools of blood, or the chilling fact that a majority of them end up getting injured by sharp knives
As Americans, we are often blinded by the food industry to think that what we are putting into our bodies is to fuel our bodies, not to profit major companies. However, the whole idea of food production is to make food for the general public in the quickest, easiest way possible. When producing a mass product, things must be done efficiently and effectively, regardless of who or what it is affecting. Major businesses try to get the most bang for their buck, and it often has high stakes for those involved in the hard labor of the food industry.
Many aspects of this industry have been explored in excerpts from “Fast Food Nation” and scenes from Food Inc., but something that particularly stood out to me was the way that the workers and animals in the slaughterhouses were treated. Workers are treated unfairly and put through unnecessary and unhealthy conditions. We get nearly all of our meat from these slaughterhouses, so it caught my attention that there are people that must work through these conditions in order to make a living, and animals that must lose their lives against their will. It made me think that while consumers are often blind to the ways in which their food is being made, it is incredibly crucial to have an understanding of the severity of poorly treated slaughterhouse workers and animals, because it is, after all, the food we are eating that comes out of the process. The ideas and arguments against the treatment of slaughterhouse workers and cattle were presented in the text in such a way that the reader is compelled to react. Because the houses were “far away from the strongholds of the nation’s labor unions” (164, Schlosser, 2002), they were able to get away with exposing both animals and workers to unhealthy and unsafe conditions without any major repercussions. The gruesome details of workers standing in pools of blood, or the chilling fact that a majority of them end up getting injured by sharp knives
Bibliography: Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton, 2001. Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. 2008. DVD.