XPost: soc.culture.usa, alt.politics.greens, alt.california   
   XPost: boulder.general   
   From: norton@cybertrails.com   
      
   Long article but an eye opener.   
      
   Hank   
      
   "Lets Roll"  wrote in message   
   news:%gkFe.8422$dU3.7534@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...   
   >   
   > 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. The smell is worst   
   > during the summer months, blanketing Greeley day and night like an   
   invisible   
   > fog. Many people who live there no longer notice the smell; it recedes   
   into   
   > the background, present but not present, like the sound of traffic for New   
   > Yorkers. Others can't stop thinking about the smell, even after years; it   
   > permeates everything, gives them headaches, makes them nauseous,   
   interferes   
   > with their sleep. Greeley is a modern-day factory town where cattle are   
   the   
   > main units of production, where workers and machines turn large steer into   
   > small, vacuum-sealed packages of meat. The billions of fast food   
   hamburgers   
   > that Americans now eat every year come from places like Greeley. 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-paying manufacturing jobs into one of the   
   > lowest-paying, created a migrant industrial workforce of poor immigrants,   
   > tolerated high injury rates, and spawned rural ghettos in the American   
   > heartland. Crime, poverty, drug abuse, and homelessness have lately taken   
   > root in towns where you'd least expect to find them. The effects of this   
   new   
   > meatpacking regime have become as inescapable as the odors that drift from   
   > its feedlots, rendering plants, and pools of slaughterhouse waste.   
   >   
   > The ConAgra Beef Company runs the nation's biggest meatpacking complex   
   just   
   > a few miles north of downtown Greeley. Weld County, which includes   
   Greeley,   
   > earns more money every year from livestock products than any other county   
   in   
   > the United States. ConAgra is the largest private employer in Weld County,   
   > running a beef slaughterhouse and a sheep slaughterhouse, as well as   
   > rendering and processing facilities.   
   >   
   > To supply the beef slaughterhouse, ConAgra operates a pair of enormous   
   > feedlots. Each of them can hold up to one hundred thousand head of cattle.   
   > At times the animals are crowded so closely together it looks like a sea   
   of   
   > cattle, a mooing, moving mass of brown and white fur that goes on for   
   acres.   
   > These cattle don't eat blue grama and buffalo grass off the prairie.   
   During   
   > the three months before slaughter, they eat grain dumped into long   
   concrete   
   > troughs that resemble highway dividers. The grain fattens the cattle   
   > quickly, aided by the anabolic steroids implanted in their ear. A typical   
   > steer will consume more than three thousand pounds of grain during its   
   stay   
   > at a feedlot, just to gain four hundred pounds in weight. The process   
   > involves a fair amount of waste. Each steer deposits about fifty pounds of   
   > urine and manure every day. Unlike human waste, the manure is not sent to   
   a   
   > treatment plant. It is dumped into pits, huge pools of excrement that the   
   > industry calls "lagoons." The amount of waste left by the cattle that pass   
   > through Weld County is staggering. The two Monfort feedlots outside   
   Greeley   
   > produce more excrement than the cities of Denver, Boston, Atlanta, and St.   
   > Louis-combined.   
   > p152   
   >   
   > When the slaughterhouse in Greeley first opened, its rural location was   
   > unusual. Meatpacking plants were much more likely to be found in urban   
   > areas. Most large American cities had a meatpacking district with its own   
   > stockyards and slaughterhouses. Cattle were shipped there by rail,   
   > slaughtered, carved into sides of beef, then sold to local butchers and   
   > wholesalers. Omaha and Kansas City were prominent meatpacking towns, and   
   the   
   > United Nations building now stands on land once occupied by New York   
   City's   
   > stockyards. For more than a century, however, Chicago reigned as the   
   > meatpacking capital of the world. The Beef Trust was born there, the major   
   > meatpacking firms were headquartered there, and roughly forty thousand   
   > people were employed there in a square-mile meat district anchored by the   
   > Union Stockyards. Refrigerated sides of beef were shipped from Chicago not   
   > only throughout the United States, but also throughout Europe. At the dawn   
   > of the twentieth century, Upton Sinclair considered Chicago's Packingtown   
   to   
   > be "the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in one   
   > place." It was in his view the supreme achievement of American capitalism,   
   > as well as its greatest disgrace.   
   >   
   > The old Chicago slaughterhouses were usually brick buildings, four or five   
   > stories high. Cattle were herded up wooden ramps to the top floor, where   
   > they were struck on the head with a sledgehammer, slaughtered, then   
   > disassembled by skilled workers. The animals eventually left the building   
   on   
   > the ground floor, coming out as sides of beef, cans of beef, or boxes of   
   > sausage ready to be loaded into railcars.   
   >   
   > The working conditions in these meatpacking plants were brutal. In The   
   > Jungle ( 1906) Upton Sinclair described a litany of horrors: severe back   
   and   
   > shoulder injuries, lacerations, amputations, exposure to dangerous   
   > chemicals, and memorably, a workplace accident in which a man fell into a   
   > vat and got turned into lard. The plant kept running, and the lard was   
   sold   
   > to unsuspecting consumers. Human beings, Sinclair argued, had been made   
   > "cogs in the great packing machine," easily replaced and entirely   
   > disposable. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an independent   
   > investigation of The Jungle's sensational details. The accuracy of the   
   book   
   > was confirmed by federal investigators, who found that Chicago's   
   meatpacking   
   > workers labored "under conditions that are entirely unnecessary and   
   > unpardonable, and which are a constant menace not only to their own   
   health,   
   > but to the health of those who use the food products prepared by them."   
   >   
   > The popular outrage inspired by The Jungle led Congress to enact food   
   safety   
   > legislation in 1906. Little was done, however, to improve the lives of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)