Meat-packing industry
The meat-packing industry (also spelled meatpacking industry or meat packing industry) handles the
).In the United States and some other countries, the facility where the meat packing is done is called a
The meat-packing industry grew with the construction of railroads and methods of
History
United States
Before the Civil War, the meat industry was localized, with nearby farmers providing beef and hogs for local butchers to serve the local market. Large Army contracts during the war attracted entrepreneurs with a vision for building much larger markets.[2] The 1865–1873 era provided five factors that nationalized the industry:
- The rapid growth of cities provided a lucrative new market for fresh meat.
- The emergence of large-scale ranching, the role of the railroads, refrigeration, and entrepreneurial skills.
- Cattle ranching on a large-scale moved to the Great Plains, from Texas northward.
- Overland cattle drives moved large herds to the railheads in Kansas, where cattle cars brought live animals eastward.
- Abilene, Kansas, became the chief railhead, shipping 35,000 cattle a year, mostly to Kansas City, Milwaukee and Chicago.
In Milwaukee,
A practical refrigerated (ice-cooled) rail car was introduced in 1881. This made it possible to ship cattle and hog carcasses, which weighed only 40% as much as live animals; the entire national market, served by the railroads, was opened up, as well as transatlantic markets using refrigerated ships. Swift developed an integrated network of cattle procurement, slaughtering, meat-packing, and shipping meat to market. Up to that time, cattle were driven great distances to railroad shipping points, causing the cattle to lose considerable weight. Swift developed a large business, which grew in size with the entry of several competitors.[3]
The
Historian William Cronon concludes:
- Because of the Chicago packers, ranchers in Wyoming and feedlot farmers in Iowa regularly found a reliable market for their animals, and on average received better prices for the animals they sold there. At the same time and for the same reason, Americans of all classes found a greater variety of more and better meats on their tables, purchased on average at lower prices than ever before. Seen in this light, the Packers' "rigid system of economy" seemed a very good thing indeed.[5]
Labor issues
In the early part of the 20th century, they used the most recent immigrants and migrants as strikebreakers in labor actions taken by other workers, also usually immigrants or early descendants. The publication of the Upton Sinclair novel The Jungle in the U.S. in 1906, shocked the public with the poor working conditions and unsanitary practices in meat-packing plants in the United States fictionally displayed, specifically Chicago.
Meat-packing plants, like many industries in the early 20th century, were known to overwork their employees, failed to maintain adequate safety measures, and actively fought unionization. Public pressure to
In the 1920s and early 1930s, workers achieved unionization under the
Though the meat-packing industry has made many improvements since the early 1900s, extensive changes in the industry since the late 20th century have caused new labor issues to arise. Today, the rate of injury in the meat-packing industry is three times that of the private industry overall, and meat-packing was noted by
Changing geography
The industry after 1945 closed its stockyards in big cities like Chicago and moved operations to small towns close to cattle ranches, especially in Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. Historically, besides Cincinnati, Chicago and Omaha, the other major meat-packing cities had been South St. Paul, Minnesota; East St. Louis, Illinois; Dubuque, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Minnesota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Sioux City, Iowa.[citation needed]
Rail to truck
Mid-century restructuring by the industry of the stockyards, slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants led to relocating facilities closer to cattle feedlots and swine production facilities, to more rural areas, as transportation shifted from rail to truck. It has been difficult for labor to organize in such locations. In addition, the number of jobs fell sharply due to technology and other changes. Wages fell during the latter part of the 20th century, and eventually, both Chicago (in 1971) and Omaha (in 1999) closed their stockyards. The workforce increasingly relied on recent migrants from Mexico. [9]
Argentina
Argentina had the natural resources and human talent to build a world-class meat-packing industry. However, its success in reaching European markets was limited by the poor quality control in the production of its meat and the general inferiority of frozen meat to the chilled meat exported by the United States and Australia. By 1900, the Argentine government encouraged investment in the industry to improve quality. The British dominated the world shipping industry and began fitting their ships for cold air containers, and built new refrigerated steamers. When the Argentine industry finally secured a large slice of the British market, Pateros and trade restrictions limited its penetration of the Continent.[10]
China
Meat in China moved from a minor specialty commodity to a major factor in the food supply in the late 20th century thanks to the rapid emergence of a middle class with upscale tastes and plenty of money. It was a transition from a country able to provide a small ration of meat for urban citizens only to the world's largest meat producer; it was a movement from a handful of processing facilities in major cities to thousands of modern meat-packing and processing plants throughout the country, alongside the rapid growth of a middle-class with spending money.[11]
Health and safety hazards
American slaughterhouse workers are three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker.
The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] for any period of time—that lets [sic] you kill things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's walking around in the blood pit with you and think, 'God, that really isn't a bad-looking animal.' You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them—beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care.
— Gail A. Eisnitz, [19]
The act of slaughtering animals or of raising or transporting animals for slaughter may engender psychological stress or trauma in the people involved.[20][21][22][23] A 2016 study in Organization indicates, "Regression analyses of data from 10,605 Danish workers across 44 occupations suggest that slaughterhouse workers consistently experience lower physical and psychological well-being along with increased incidences of negative coping behavior".[24] A 2009 study by criminologist Amy Fitzgerald indicates, "slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries".[25] As authors from the PTSD Journal explain, "These employees are hired to kill animals, such as pigs and cows that are largely gentle creatures. Carrying out this action requires workers to disconnect from what they are doing and from the creature standing before them. This emotional dissonance can lead to consequences such as domestic violence, social withdrawal, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD".[26]
Slaughterhouses in the United States commonly illegally employ and exploit underage workers and illegal immigrants.
Another problem in this context is that the pharmaceutical industry obtains basic materials for its products from the meat-packing industry; for example, tissue extracts from slaughterhouse waste. In the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, this led to the paradoxical situation that mass slaughterhouses were infection drivers due to the bad labor conditions and at the same time suppliers of important therapeutics such as heparin, which subsequently became a scarce commodity.[31] Medical historian Benjamin Prinz has therefore pointed to the fragility of today's healthcare systems, which themselves participate in environmentally destructive and disease-causing production chains.[32]
Contemporary concerns about the meat industry within the American context have often been colored by the COVID-19 Pandemic and the resulting supply chain issues. Beyond the consumer perspective, workers were expected to drastically increase the rate at which they process animals. For instance, workers were expected to process 175 birds per minute up from 140 birds per minute.[33] In part this was due to shortages of workers. Workers within the industry were often in the news for large outbreaks within factories.[34] By its nature meat processing requires close proximity to other workers and exposure to a slew of bacteria and viruses. Additionally, workers often have to yell over loud machinery which increases the amount of contaminated droplets in the air.[35] More than 50,000 meat packing workers contracted the disease and over 200 died.[35] Disease is not evenly distributed throughout factories and all workers in a given factory are not at equal risk for exposure and negative health outcomes despite working the same job. In particular, the overlap of immigration status and workplace exposures can result in a variety of negative health outcomes.[36]
Meatpackers
Big Four
By 1900, the dominating meat packers were:[37]
Big Three
In the 1990s, the Big Three were:[38]
- IBP
- ConAgra Foods
- Excel Corporation
Today
Current significant meat packers in the United States include:[39]
Beef Packers:
- Tyson Foods
- Cargill Meat Solutions (Excel)
- JBS USA (Swift)
- National Beef
Pork Packers:
- Smithfield Foods
- Seaboard Corporation
- Tyson Foods
- JBS USA
- Cargill Meat Solutions
Broiler Chickens:
Outside the United States:
- Teys Australia
- JBS S.A. (Brazil)
- BRF S.A. (Brazil)
- Charoen Pokphand Group(Thailand)
- Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company (South Africa)
- Maple Leaf Foods (Canada)
- Schneider Foods(Canada)
- Cargill Proteins (Canada)
- AFFCO Holdings (New Zealand)
See also
- Animal–industrial complex
- Continuous inspection
- Environmental impact of meat production
- Golden Triangle of Meat-packing
- Labor rights in American meatpacking industry
- Slaughterhouse
- Union Stock Yards, Chicago
Footnotes
- ^ Noted. "Following the call of New Zealand's abandoned freezing works". Noted. Archived from the original on 2019-05-25. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
- ^ a b Allan Nevins, The emergence of modern America, 1865-1878 (1927) pp 35-39.
- ^ Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (1962). pp 25-28
- ISSN 0270-272X.
- ISBN 9780393072457.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
- ^ "Blood, Sweat, and Fear". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
- ^ "Who are America’s meat and poultry workers?". Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
- ^ Robert Greenhill, "Shipping and the Refrigerated Meat Trade from the River Plate, 1900–1930." International Journal of Maritime History 4.1 (1992): 65-82.
- ^ Guanghong Zhou, Wangang Zhang, and Xinglian Xu. "China's meat industry revolution: Challenges and opportunities for the future." Meat science 92.3 (2012): 188-196.
- ^ "Meatpacking". Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ Lowe, Peggy (11 August 2016). "Working 'The Chain,' Slaughterhouse Workers Face Lifelong Injuries". National Public Radio. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ "Two amputations a week: the cost of working in a US meat plant". The Guardian. 5 July 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ Lewis, Cora (18 February 2018). "America's Largest Meat Producer Averages One Amputation Per Month". Buzzfeed News. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ "Revealed: Shocking safety record of UK meat plants". The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. 29 July 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- PMID 30046554.
- PMID 15150395.
- ^ Eisnitz, Gail A. (1997). Slaughterhouse:: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry. Prometheus Books.
- ^ "PTSD in the Slaughterhouse". The Texas Observer. 7 February 2012. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
- ^ "Psychological Distress Among Slaughterhouse Workers Warrants Further Study - SPH - Boston University". School of Public Health. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
- ^ Dillard, Jennifer (September 2007). "A Slaughterhouse Nightmare: Psychological Harm Suffered by Slaughterhouse Employees and the Possibility of Redress through Legal Reform". ResearchGate.net. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
- ^ Nagesh, Ashitha (31 December 2017). "The harrowing psychological toll of slaughterhouse work". Metro. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- S2CID 148368906.
- S2CID 148368906.
- ^ "The Psychological Damage of Slaughterhouse Work". PTSDJournal. Archived from the original on 25 May 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ Waldman, Peter (29 December 2017). "America's Worst Graveyard Shift Is Grinding Up Workers". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ Grabell, Michael (1 May 2017). "Exploitation and Abuse at the Chicken Plant". The New Yorker. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ Varia, Nisha (11 December 2010). "Rights on the Line". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- ^ Grabell, Michael (23 May 2018). "Lives on the Line". Oxfam America. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
- PMID 33332291.
- S2CID 246575794.
- ^ Thompson, Shayla (2020-07-17). "Op-ed: Speeding Up Poultry Lines in a Pandemic Puts Workers' Lives in Danger". Civil Eats. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
- ^ Douglas, Leah (2022-01-14). "Nearly 90% of big US meat plants had COVID-19 cases in pandemic's first year - data". Reuters. Retrieved 2023-07-06.
- ^ PMID 36133635.
- PMID 31080311.
- ISBN 978-1-58729-774-8.
- ISBN 978-0-87565-304-4.
- ^ Wise, Timothy A.; Rakocy, Betsy. "Hogging the Gains from Trade: The Real Winners from U.S. Trade and Agricultural Policies". Tufts University: Global Development And Environment Institute. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
Further reading
- Arnould, Richard J. "Changing patterns of concentration in American meat packing, 1880–1963." Business History Review 45.1 (1971): 18-34.
- Barrett, James R. Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (U of Illinois Press, 1990).
- Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), pp 207–59.
- Fields, Gary (2003). "Communications, innovation, and territory: the production network of Swift Meat Packing and the creation of a national US market". Journal of Historical Geography. 29 (4). Elsevier BV: 599–617. S2CID 154757208.
- Gordon, Steve C. "From Slaughterhouse to Soap-Boiler: Cincinnati's Meat Packing Industry, Changing Technologies, and the Rise of Mass Production, 1825-1870." IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology (1990): 55-67.
- Gras, N.S.B. and Henrietta M. Larson. Casebook in American business history (1939) pp 623–43 on Armour company.
- Hill, Howard Copeland. "The development of Chicago as a center of the meat packing industry." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10.3 (1923): 253-273. in JSTOR
- Horowitz, Roger. Putting meat on the American table: Taste, technology, transformation (Johns Hopkins UP, 2006).
- Horowitz, Roger. Negro and White, Unite and Fight!: A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90 (U of Illinois Press, 1997).
- Kujovich, M. Yeager. "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry," Business History Review 44 (1970) 460-482.
- Skaggs, Jimmy M. Prime Cut: Livestock raising and meatpacking in the United States, 1607-1983 (Texas A & M UP, 1986).
- Wade, Louise Carroll. Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century (U of Illinois Press, 1987).
- Walsh, Margaret. The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry (1983), strong on pork'
- Walsh, Margaret. "Pork packing as a leading edge of Midwestern industry, 1835-1875." Agricultural History 51.4 (1977): 702-717. in JSTOR
- Walsh, Margaret. "The spatial evolution of the mid-western pork industry, 1835-1875" Journal of Historical Geography 4#1 (1978) 1-22.
- Warren, Wilson J. Tied to the great packing machine: The Midwest and meatpacking (U of Iowa Press, 2007).
- Yeager, Mary (1981). Competition and Regulation: The Development of Oligopoly in the Meat Packing Industry. Greenwich, Connecticut: Jai Press. OCLC 7167708.
World
- Barnes, Felicity, and David M. Higgins. "Brand image, cultural association, and marketing: 'New Zealand' butter and lamb exports to Britain, c. 1920–1938." Business History (2017): 1-28.
- Lopes, Maria-Aparecida. "Struggles over an 'Old, Nasty, and Inconvenient Monopoly': Municipal Slaughterhouses and the Meat Industry in Rio de Janeiro, 1880–1920s." Journal of Latin American Studies 47.2 (2015): 349-376.
- MacLachlan, Ian. Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada's Beef Commodity Chain (U of Toronto Press, 2001).
- Nützenadel, Alexander. "A Green International? Food Markets and Transnational Politics, c. 1850-1914." Food and globalization: consumption, markets, and politics in the modern world (Berg, 2008) pp: 153-73.
- Perren, Richard. Taste, trade, and technology: the development of the international meat industry since 1840 (Ashgate, 2006).
- Silver, Jim (2008-07-24). "The Origins of Winnipeg's Packinghouse Industry: Transitions from Trade to Manufacture". Prairie Forum. 19: 15–30. ISSN 0317-6282.
- Woods, Rebecca JH. "From Colonial Animal to Imperial Edible Building an Empire of Sheep in New Zealand, ca. 1880-1900." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35.1 (2015): 117-136.
- Yeager, Mary. Competition and Regulation: The Development of Oligopoly in the Meat Packing Industry (1981)
External links
External videos | |
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Meatpacking: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) on YouTube |