From the Meat File
Two items from the “You Gonna Eat That?” category have been sitting in my mental inbox all day.
The first comes by way of Karmalized. I already knew a bit, from reading Fast Food Nation (which I highly recommend, accompanied by a side order of Super Size Me) that the meat packing industry is rife with on-the-job dangers for its employees. Human Rights watch has recently come out with a report detailing abuses against workers in the meat and poultry industries.
In meat and poultry plants across the United States, Human Rights Watch found that many workers face a real danger of losing a limb, or even their lives, in unsafe work conditions. It also found that companies frequently deny workers’ compensation to employees injured on the job, intimidate and fire workers who try to organize, and exploit workers’ immigrant status in order to keep them quiet about abuses.
Field research for the report examined beef packing in Nebraska, hog slaughtering in North Carolina, and poultry processing in Arkansas. The report looks closely at companies such as Tyson Foods Inc., Smithfield Foods Inc., and Nebraska Beef Ltd.
“Meatpacking is the most dangerous factory job in America,” said Lance Compa, the report’s author and a labor rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Dangerous conditions are cheaper for companies—and the government does next to nothing.”
…Human Rights Watch also documented aggressive and unlawful company efforts to derail workers’ organizing efforts.
“When workers try to defend themselves by forming unions, employers use fear and intimidation to stop them,” Compa said. “U.S. law does little to protect workers who try to organize. Enforcement efforts drag on for years, and even decisions that favor workers are usually too little, too late.”
An example of unlawful tactics are those Smithfield Foods has taken in response to organizing efforts at its massive pork-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, where 5,000 workers slaughter, cut and package more than 25,000 hogs a day. In a 1997 union election, Smithfield’s management fired union supporters, threatened plant closure, stationed police at plant gates to intimidate workers, and orchestrated an assault on union activists. On December 16, the National Labor Relations Board ordered a new election, which Smithfield immediately appealed.
Something to think about next time you consider ordering that steak. That’s one economy of misery I don’t want to be a part of.
The second, from Boing Boing is a somewhat more humorous look at living with the by-products of the meat industry and its large-scale factory farming methods.
Urban dwellers who enjoy dining on filet mignon at five-star restaurants would probably just as soon not know about David Dickinson’s dilemma.
…But Dickinson, who makes his living in the cattle business, has an environmental problem on his hands that is vexing state officials: a 2,000-ton pile of burning cow manure.
Dickinson owns and manages Midwest Feeding Co. about 20 miles west of Lincoln, which takes in as many as 12,000 cows at a time from farmers and ranchers and fattens them for market.
Byproducts from the massive operation resulted in a dung pile measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet high and 50 feet wide that began burning about two months ago and continues to smolder despite Herculean attempts to douse it.
It’s believed that heat generated by the decomposition process deep within the pile of poo started the fire. Here’s hoping there is/isn’t a steakhouse downwind of the smoke.
Oops. There is.
Wilma Roth, who manages a restaurant along Interstate 80 about a mile north of the feedlot, said her customers have complained about the smoke, which wafts for miles.
“I’d just as soon forget about it,” she said.
No big deal. When customers ask about the smell, smile and say “It’s just the smoldering shit of that cow you’re munching on.”
January 28th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
When I used to drive from Houston to Dallas on I-45, you could smell the funk of a nearby slaughterhouse in mid-trip. Every time we passed it, we went, “There goes somebody’s dinner getting ready”. Yuch.
January 28th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Lived on a farm, slaughtered my own beef, went to the chicken coop and picked out dinner. Gutted and dressed out wild game and none of it has slowed my meat eating. I’ve even been known to ask dinner guests “Would any one care for more charred animal flesh?”
Sorry but that’s just the way it is. I gots to have my meat.
And one more thing. I doubt a 2000 ton pile of burning, rotting vegetable matter would smell any better nor do I believe it would prevent you from eating vegetables?