Fast Food Nation written by Eric Schlosser.
Precis
seven: cogs in the great machine.
"You can smell Greeley, Colorado, long before you can see it. The smell is hard to forget but not easy to describe, a combination of live animals, manure, and dead animals being rendered into dog food." Cogs in the Great Machine, chapter seven of Fast Food Nation begins by describing the factory town of Greeley. Schlosser illustrates the industrialization of the meatpacking by going into detail the common domino efects that the industries have on towns. The majority of the time when companies like IBP or ConAgra enter a town, problems such as crime, drugs and poverty begin to rise higher than ever before. ConAgra, a large, major beef supplier, holds large feedlots where cattle are so often abused to the point of death. Cattle are supposed to eat grass, but today, unless they're 'grass fed cows', they eat other products like corn, grain, and as a result of this 'mad cow disease,' dead cow. These companies chose to feed the cows this because they've learned that the larger the cow, the larger the profit. The large amounts of excrement that the cows give off are then dumped into huge pits, and aren't treated like human poop. "The two Monfort feedlots outside Greeley produce more excrement than the cities of Denver, Boston, Atlanta and St.Louis- combined."
I began to wonder how exactly the town became this way. People might view this as development because of the effect this town and other meat packing towns have on large, major cities, but I viewed it with disgust. The following chapters told the history of Greeley- which started off pretty well. The city was founded by a man named Nathan Meeker, who's objective to creating the town was a utopian dream, meaning an idealistic way of life. Local farmers began by feeding the cows grass, but Warren Monfort realized that by feeding the cows grain, they'd save a lot more money, and make a lot more profit. When Monfort first opened his slaughterhouses, workers were treated with respect and the jobs at the slaughterhouse paid high wages. Today, companies target mostly immigrants, where one fourth of workers are undocumented.
eight: the most dangerous job
The title of the chapter along with the photo of a man, woman and a baby sitting on a couch make the word exploitation waves across my thoughts. Schlosser begins by taking me on a tour through the largest slaughterhouse in the United States, in the High Plains, wherever that is. Large slabs of meat are all over the house, and the images of thousands of cattle entering the slaughterhouse, and exiting in a cardboard package fill my head. There is literally one tiny window throughout the entire building. Workers have to wear metal on their bodies for protection from the knives, but reviewing the amount of recorded injuries, the steel obviously doesn't do much. Hundreds of the workers are pressed together, so its easy for one worker to hurt the other. What made me the angriest during the reading is when I read about the sexual harassment toward the females that occurs often in the slaughterhouse.
Gems
"Some machines assemble cardboard boxes, others vacuum-seal subprimals of beef in clear plastic."
"Carcasses swing so fast along the rail that you have to keep an eye on them constantly, dodge them, watch your step, or one will slam you and throw you onto the bloody concrete floor."
"Now the cattle suspended above me look just like the cattle I've seen on ranchers
Thoughts
Having seen films and photos that go into this are of study deeply, I felt as though I was already educated enough on this topic. But reading this book is a completely different experience than watching a film and taking down notes. One thing that shocked me, because I hadn't heard it before, because it hadn't been spoken about was the sexual harassment. It made me so angry to find out that managers of certain slaughterhouses sexually harassed some of their female workers. I think that films like FRESH and Food Inc. need to address this sexual harassment.
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