Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of
Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry
by Gail. E. Eisnitz, 1997
Imagine hell: plaintive screams, rivers of blood,
mountains of viscera and gore, dissection and dismemberment of
still living beings who are butchered and tortured by unfeeling
sadists. Welcome to the world of slaughterhouses, and its worse
than you dared to imagine.
Slaughterhouse is a tale of unfathomable insanity,
cruelty, and evil. The most gruesome and unethical practices are
repeated around the country, and yet it is a story that media
programs have deemed "too disgusting" to report. It
has taken the relentless work of a courageous woman to bring the
horrifying details of the slaughterhouse to public attention.
This is investigative journalism at its best, as Eisnitz does
the job that government agencies will not do, tied as they are
to the meat industries.
Eisnitz's hard-earned research is based on government
documents, first hand observation, interviews with whistleblowers
and slaughterhouse workers, and the files of the Government Accountability
Project (GAP). Eisnitz's reputation precedes her: she has worked
dangerous undercover jobs to infiltrate and expose rings of animal
abusers, and she broke open the clenbuterol story by proving that
dangerous and illegal growth hormones were being used to fatten
veal calves. In Slaughterhouse, and her recent legal activism,
she takes on the USDA itself and reveals its lies and disinformation
campaigns.
On Eisnitz's account, serious problems in the
industry started in the late 1970s, when new technologies were
increasing the slaughter rates and, with them, levels of pathogenic
contamination. Then, with the Reagan administration, the USDA,
like other government agencies, was deregulated, allowing the
meat industry to police itself. The result was the "Streamlined
Inspection System" (SIS) that dramatically reduced the number
of government inspectors, while doubling or tripling the line
speeds at the slaughterhouses and packing plants.
The "USDA seal of approval" gives the
appearance of federal regulation when in fact there is little
or none. Standing at the end of the line, unable to witness the
killing and trimming processes, inspectors are allowed to sample
only a fraction of a per cent of the carcasses. Like the veterinarians,
they give their imprimatur that all is safe, healthy, and well,
knowing that if they remain quiet and compliant they can have
a cushy job with the meat industry later in their careers.
The system pursues maximal speed and efficiency,
driven by the quest for profit over concern with animals, workers,
and the public health. A large percentage of the animals are not
adequately stunned, and therefore are clipped, shackled, hoisted,
hooked by the nose or anus, bled, dismembered, skinned, boiled,
and ground up while still aware and alive. Animals are forced
to endure up to a half-mile long trip through the slaughterhouse,
and ten minutes of electric prodding, beating, and step-by-step
dissection before they finally die.
Those who get caught in the gate guards or the
line have their legs or heads chopped or burned off. Often, workers
grow angry and vent their frustrations on the animals, as they
pummel them with lead pipes or gouge out their eyes, some making
it a source of amusement. The so-called "Humane Slaughter
Act," passed by Congress in 1958 but opposed by the USDA,
is not enforced. Chickens and poultry animals have no law whatsoever
protecting them, and violations of the law carries no penalties.
Management does not care any more about workers
than animals. The slaughterhouses employ the economically desperate,
including many immigrants, legal and illegal. Working in a slaughterhouse
is among the most dangerous jobs one can work. Workers often are
badly cut as they try to kill an animal improperly stunned; their
hands or arms are cut off in the machinery; hoisted animals fall
on them; they suffer various kinds of repetitive motion syndrome.
They have little break time, and often are forced to urinate on
the floor rather than leave their station. The routinization of
death has dehumanized them, although some privately admit concern
for the animals. Many are alcoholics and drug abusers, and bring
their violence home to their families.
With deregulation, eating meat has become increasingly
dangerous, and food poisoning began to climb dramatically. Death
from food poisoning more than quadrupled during the decade of
deregulation from 2,000 in 1984 to 9,000 in 1994, and according
to the Center for Disease Control estimates, there are now between
6.5 and 81 million cases of food poisoning each year. Since 1978,
USDA inspectors have steadily lost authority to condemn bad meat,
and consumers are eating carcasses contaminated with pus, feces,
urine, lung and heart infections, ingesta, maggots, tumors, e-coli,
salmonella, and possibly the prions that cause Mad Cow Disease.
No animal lover or activist will want to read
this book, but no one can do without it. Of all the horrors I
personally have read about, nothing prepared me for this book.
It is a tale of unbelievable abuses -- of animals, workers, and
the public trust -- and of vast government corruption. In particular,
it is a stinging indictment of the USDA: not only does the USDA
fail to protect animals, workers, and the public, it commissions
junk science to disseminate disinformation to the public and protect
the interests of the very meat industry it is supposed to regulate.
Eisnitz paid a high price for the stress of constant
work and encounters of animal abuse, as she contracted cancer
during the writing of the book (from which she apparently has
recovered). Having done her part, Eisnitz leaves us with the burden
of knowledge -- and the responsibility to ourselves become involved.
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