The American Meat Processing Industry

Fast Food, Beef Recalls, and Public Health In The United States

Jun 29, 2008

Hamburgers, one of America's best-marketed foods, pose a health risk, especially to children. And the meat processing industry shows few signs of cleaning up its act.

Possibly the most disturbing thing about Eric Schlosser’s 2001 book Fast Food Nation is just how little has changed about the meat processing industry since Upton Sinclair released his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle, in 1905.Worker exploitation and unsanitary food are still common; and the stakes continue to increase as the industry consolidates, giving multinational companies more control over the food supply.

Low Points of the Last Decade

Weighing in at 143 million pounds, Westland/Hallmark Meat Company of Chino, California, announces the largest recall of ground beef in U.S. History. Much of it was distributed to the United States’ school lunch program.

Humane Society of the United States distributes an investigative video showing Westland Meatpacking workers using forklifts to force downer cows into the slaughter line and food supply.

After an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in Canada, Dr. Stanley Prusiner, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of prions, attempts to impress upon Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman the imminent threat of the disease in the United States. According to the December 25 New York Times article by Sandra Blakeslee cited here, Dr. Prusiner was rebuffed.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirms the nation’s first case of Mad Cow Disease.

Recall of 35 million pounds of ground beef distributed by Thorne Apple Valley’s Fort Valley, Arkansas plant after the meat tested positive for the bacteria, listeria. The previous December, a listeria outbreak was linked to 14 deaths, six miscarriages and 97 illnesses in 22 states, requiring Sara Lee Corporation’s Bil Mar meat processor to recall 15 million pounds of meat. (Food & Drink Weekly, March 15, 1999)

According to Schlosser, Americans spent approximately $ 6 billion on fast food in 1970 and $110 billion in 2001. He goes on to state that “Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars … movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined.”

Effects on ChildrenIn much the same manner as tobacco companies, fast food chains use ingenious marketing efforts to target young consumers; these range from toy-laden Happy Meals and onsite playgrounds to 99-cent value menus and cute commercials with talking Chihuahuas.

According to Fast Food Nation, children between the ages of 7 and 13 are the largest consumers of hamburgers. They are also some of the most vulnerable consumers of meat tainted with food borne pathogens, such as E. coli 0157:H7, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, and Clostridium perfringens.

Schlosser asserts that “every day in the United States, approximately 200,000 people are sickened by a food borne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die.” The majority of these are children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems.

Many of the food borne pathogens that make eating a hamburger so dangerous are carried in fecal matter, which regularly gets into the meat due to the rapid-pace and inherently messy process of slaughtering animals. To put it as plainly as Schlosser does: “There is shit in the meat.”

Read more about worker exploitation and strike busting by the meat processing industry here.

The copyright of the article The American Meat Processing Industry in Modern US History is owned by Cheri Renee Watkins. Permission to republish The American Meat Processing Industry in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.