Preview

Cattle Raising And Meatpacking: Chapter Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
176 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cattle Raising And Meatpacking: Chapter Analysis
At the beginning of the chapter, Eric meets Hank a local rancher, who shows him around the subdivisions of Colorado Spring that is taking over the ranch land. “The industrialization of cattle-raising and meatpacking over the past two decades has completely altered how beef is produced- and the towns that produce it. Responding to the demands of the fast food and supermarket chains, the meatpacking giants have cut costs by cutting wages. They have turned one of the nation's best manufacturing jobs into one of the lowest paying, created by a migrant industrial workforce of poor immigrants, tolerated high injury rates, and spawned rural ghettos in the American heartland” (Schlosser 149). This quote explains in meat processing companies, which

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the middle of this chapter, Eric Schlosser talks about the ConAgra Beef Company. He talks about the large amount of cattle in feedlots. All of the cows eat an enormous amount of food that helps them get big. In addition to that they get even bigger with the help of a steroid that is in their ear. With all of the food consumed by cows they can end up depositing up to 50 pounds of fecal matter and urine a day! Next, the book talks about the founder of Greeley, Colorado, Nathan Meeker. After giving a brief summary of his life, the author goes into talking about how things were in Greeley before the mass industrialization.…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the beginning of the chapter, Eric meets Hank a local rancher, who shows him around the subdivisions of Colorado Spring that are taking over the ranching land. The meat packing companies shows a cruel side of it and the way they been treated was unequally on the land compares to in a ranch life and the impact of the poor environment in a condition.…

    • 231 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mexico inspired Western cattle ranching. The first cattle in the Americas came from Spain, there were so many cattle that ranching became a very good business for Californios, Tejanos and the Americans who learned from the Mexicans. The cattle from Spain were very thin and their horns were long and broad. Instead of the dairy products produced by Eastern farms, the Western ranches produced things like meat and hides. Rancheros overlooked their herds and fields while vaqueros were hired to take care of the cattle. One of the vaqueros most important jobs was branding, which was when they used a hot iron to burn a mark into the cow’s skin. Branding was necessary to tell people’s cows apart because different owners let their cows out in the same…

    • 154 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    It pulls in the audience's emotion by try and making them feel a certain way by displaying sadness, confidence, or happiness. The author makes the reader feel sorry and disgusted with the industry and what they do to cut costs. He explains that fast food workers have had one of the highest murder rates, second only to police officers! As officers responded to a robbery they saw, “the bodies lay in an empty restaurant as burglar alarms rang, game lights flashed, a vacuum cleaner ran and Chuck E. Cheese mechanical animals continued to perform children's songs” (87). These are jobs that a majority of young adults, teens, apply for and yet they have one of the highest death rates, for simply serving food. Even after this example, Schlosser in gruesome detail, explains other examples of young fast food workers getting killed or hurt on the job. Also, he visits a ranch where he meets a man named Hank. He sells his cattle to the meat industry. Hank seems like a happy person in the beginning and took charge of his business. But, Hank commits suicide a few months after. There maybe multiple reasons why he took his life. It could have been caused “by the consolidation and homogenizing influence of the fast food chains, by monopoly power in the meatpacking industry, by depressed prices in the cattle market” (146). Because of the multiple factors that Hank had no control of, he took his life. He had two kids and a wife, but the pain he felt was too great to…

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cow Calf Research Paper

    • 585 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Cow calf administrators keep up a rearing group of meat dairy animals and regulate their multiplication. There are more than 60,000 cow calf cultivates the nation over. Canada's hamburger cow crowd is evaluated at roughly 5 million head. Rearing groups run in size from as few as five to 10 dairy animals on little blended homesteads to a few hundred or more on expansive farms. The rearing crowd comprises of dairy animals and yearlings of a solitary breed or crossbreed that are precisely chosen for maternal attributes, for example, mothering capacity, simplicity of calving, drain generation and hamburger quality characteristics of their posterity. Execution tried, thoroughbred bulls from breeds noted for the attractive attributes of their posterity make up the male side of the crowd; one bull can regularly breed with…

    • 585 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Only Way to Have a Cow" by Bill McKibben tries to inform humans to decrease the intake of meat eating and how this habit could harm our environment. Cow would release harmful substance like methane when they fart or belch. These actions could actually lead to a bigger problem, global warming. Turning into vegans could make environment more friendly. Eating grass fed cows are more healthy that eating corn fed cows. However another problem forms, grass fed cows are more expensive then corn fed grass which causes people with low incomes couldn't afford to eat…

    • 97 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    According to Merriam-Webster, a feedlot is defined as a plot of land on which livestock are fattened for market. Feedlots have vastly taken over America in the past few years. “Almost all beef found in grocery stores come from cattle fattened up in large grain feeding operations” (Robbins video). John Robbins describes these feedlots in the film clip Diet for a New America (meat consumption). The point of this essay is to explore the negative and positive arguments made by John Robbins in the film clip Diet for a New America (meat consumption). Throughout the video it describes how bad feedlots are. They are unsanitary, overcrowded, and inhumane. They are also contaminating the nearby water sources. Manure is going into the ground contaminating the water in ways that can be destructive. Fertilizer is also getting into the water as well.…

    • 1489 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Meat Industry Dbq

    • 138 Words
    • 1 Page

    Factories were located in urban areas and as a result the cities grew. To this new way of life there was both an upside and a downside. The industry improved, ideas were easily shared and products were made better and cheaper. On the other hand, the cities were a trap for disease, crime, and pollution. Large amounts of immigrants entered the country and they often lived in tenements. Life was not simple and several reporters, the Muckrakers, exposed injustices. The most known would be Upton Sinclair, his revelations of the meat industry inspired the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act.…

    • 138 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Ruth L. Ozeki’s novel titled My Year of Meats, she utilizes protagonist Jane’s experiences filming a propagandistic television show for an American meat lobbying organization to explore social and political problems in both American and Japanese cultures and how each illuminates the other. In particular, halfway through her journey filming and discovering the structured ignorance fueling the meat industry, Jane attends a Baptist church in Harmony, Mississippi while interviewing the poor, black family of Miss Helen and Mr. Purcell Dawes as possible stars of an episode of My American Wife!. The sermon given by the Preacher that morning in Mississippi prepares the reader for Jane’s dive into researching the unpopular details of the meat industry, its mechanisms of success and the industry’s place, or lack of, within the countries, states, towns, communities, neighbors and families of the world. Throughout My Year of Meats, Jane explores the effects of the meat industry on a plethora of aspects of life including reproduction, economy, regional identity, racism, and gender roles. By telling the story of how life is all interconnected and dependent on each individual through the Preacher, Ozeki forces the reader to consider the meat industry’s place in this…

    • 1056 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bill Mckibben, author and environmentalist, explains why being a vegetarian is beneficial for the environment in the article "The Only Way to Have a Cow." He argues that the manufacturing of corn and beef releases harmful gasses into the atmosphere. Eating less meat would decrease the amount of those gasses and improve the environment. I believe there is some truth to what McKibben is saying but his tone is slightly like that of someone who is or thinks they are superior.…

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The unforeseen problems that agribusiness has brought to the host cities range from the increase in crime, health problems, communication problems, increase in migration (documented, undocumented, refugees) that leads to prejudice and culture clashes, inhumane working environments, increase in housing cost while working for minimum wage, environmental problems, and much more. In the book, Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America, David D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway point out that the current state of the meat and poultry industry is unstable and inhumane. If large meat and poultry corporations like Tyson and others want to decrease these unwanted problems that come with the food industry, Stull and Broadway…

    • 180 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “For all the frills of their haute cuisine, the French harbor a deep affection for the foods of their heartland: ingredients and dishes that lay bare their rural origins. That is one of the things that struck me as I got to know the Auvergne…a land of remote farm villages tucked amid the extinct volcanoes of the Massif Central mountain range, France.” It seems almost a distant and far off proposition, where the people of a particular part of a country prefer to have home grown authentic food, and not crops and meat that has been produced in factory farms or large slaughterhouses. More bushels of grain is not the only goal of most farm production; farm resources must also generate wealth for the overall improvement of rural life. This includes better housing, education, and better health services. This is not the goal of large farm production today in America. This quote from an essay written in 2003 sums up the situation in the Great Plains today as a result of farm expansion,…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The cattle industry exists in an ever growing dynamic contemporary world. Each year there are new technologies and possibilities. There are various opportunities in the upcoming years for cattlemen including niche markets, improved genetic data tracking and reproduction techniques, innovative communication, and global exports. As a young cattle-woman, I am confident my generation will make a lasting impact on the cattle industry, and I plan to be a part of that movement.…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The cattle industry from the 1860s through the 1890s went through growths, declines, and changes; a dynamic industry characterized by hard work, long cattle drives, and the development of ranching, but also racial discrimination towards Native-Americans. It was made possible by the construction of railroads, and led to the creation of “cow towns”, isolated towns located in an area where there was a lot of raising of cattle.…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Great Cattle Killing

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In April 1856, after almost eighty years of intermittent frontier wars between British colonial powers and the amaXhosa of the Eastern Cape, a young Xhosa girl by the name of Nongqawuse received a message. She told her uncle that spirits came to her near the Gxarha River, saying, "Tell that the whole community will rise from the dead; and that all cattle now living must be slaughtered..." (1). This message became the potent prophecy central to the Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856-57, one of the "most extraordinary [stories] in human history" (2), a pivotal moment that broke the back of the amaXhosa and ushered in a new era of colonial expansion and domination.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays