SLAUGHTERHOUSE: THE SHOCKING STORY OF GREED, NEGLECT,
AND INHUMANE TREATMENT INSIDE THE U.S. MEAT INDUSTRY
by Gail. E. Eisnitz
Email: [email protected]
Prometheus Books, 1997
Imagine hell: plaintive screams, rivers of blood,
mountains of viscera and gore, dissection and dismemberment of still
living beings who are butchered and tortured by unfeeling sadists.
Welcome to the world of slaughterhouses, and it's worse than you dared
to imagine.
Slaughterhouse is a tale of unfathomable insanity,
cruelty, and evil. The most gruesome and unethical practices are
repeated around the country, and yet it is a story that media programs
have deemed "too disgusting" to report. It has taken the relentless work
of a courageous woman to bring the horrifying details of the
slaughterhouse to public attention. This is investigative journalism at
its best, as Eisnitz does the job that government agencies will not do,
tied as they are to the meat industries.
Eisnitz's hard-earned research is based on government
documents, first hand observation, interviews with whistleblowers and
slaughterhouse workers, and the files of the Government Accountability
Project (GAP). Eisnitz's reputation precedes her: she has worked
dangerous undercover jobs to infiltrate and expose rings of animal
abusers, and she broke open the clenbuterol story by proving that
dangerous and illegal growth hormones were being used to fatten veal
calves. In Slaughterhouse, and her recent legal activism, she takes on
the USDA itself and reveals its lies and disinformation campaigns.
On Eisnitz's account, serious problems in the industry
started in the late 1970s, when new technologies were increasing the
slaughter rates and, with them, levels of pathogenic contamination.
Under the Reagan administration, the USDA, like other government
agencies, was deregulated, allowing the meat industry to police itself.
The result was the "Streamlined Inspection System" (SIS) that
dramatically reduced the number of government inspectors, while doubling
or tripling the line speeds at the slaughterhouses and packing plants.
The "USDA seal of approval" gives the appearance of
federal regulation when in fact there is little or none. Standing at the
end of the line, unable to witness the killing and trimming processes,
inspectors are allowed to sample only a fraction of a per cent of the
carcasses. Like the veterinarians, they give their imprimatur that all
is safe, healthy, and well, knowing that if they remain quiet and
compliant they can have a cushy job with the meat industry later in
their careers.
The system pursues maximal speed and efficiency, driven
by the quest for profit over concern with animals, workers, and the
public health. A large percentage of the animals are not adequately
stunned, and therefore are clipped, shackled, hoisted, hooked by the
nose or anus, bled, dismembered, skinned, boiled, and ground up while
still aware and alive. Animals are forced to endure up to a half-mile
long trip through the slaughterhouse, and ten minutes of electric
prodding, beating, and step-by-step dissection before they finally die.
Those who get caught in the gate guards or the line have
their legs or heads chopped or burned off. Often, workers grow angry and
vent their frustrations on the animals, as they pummel them with lead
pipes or gouge out their eyes, some making it a source of amusement. The
so-called "Humane Slaughter Act," passed by Congress in 1958 but opposed
by the USDA, is not enforced. Chickens and poultry animals have no law
whatsoever protecting them, and violations of the law carries no
penalties.
Management does not care any more about workers than
animals. The slaughterhouses employ the economically desperate,
including many immigrants, legal and illegal. Working in a
slaughterhouse is among the most dangerous jobs one can work. Workers
often are badly cut as they try to kill an animal improperly stunned;
their hands or arms get cut off in the machinery; hoisted animals fall
on them; and they suffer various kinds of repetitive motion syndrome.
They have little break time, and often are forced to urinate on the
floor rather than leave their station. The routinization of death has
dehumanized them, although some privately admit concern for the animals.
Many are alcoholics and drug abusers, and bring their violence home to
their families.
With deregulation, eating meat has become increasingly
dangerous. Death from food poisoning more than quadrupled during the
decade of deregulation from 2,000 in 1984 to 9,000 in 1994, and
according to the Center for Disease Control estimates, there are now
between 6.5 and 81 million cases of food poisoning each year. Since
1978, USDA inspectors have steadily lost authority to condemn bad meat,
and consumers are eating carcasses contaminated with pus, feces, urine,
lung and heart infections, ingesta, maggots, tumors, e-coli, salmonella,
and possibly the prions that cause Mad Cow Disease.
No animal lover or activist will want to read this book,
but no one can do without it. Of all the horrors I personally have read
about, nothing prepared me for this. It is a tale of unbelievable abuses
-- of animals, workers, and the public trust -- and of vast government
corruption. In particular, it is a stinging indictment of the USDA: not
only does the USDA fail to protect animals, workers, and the public, it
commissions junk science to disseminate disinformation to the public and
protect the interests of the very meat industry it is supposed to
regulate.
Eisnitz paid a high price for the stress of constant
work and encounters of animal abuse, as she contracted cancer during the
writing of the book (from which she apparently has recovered). Having
done her part, Eisnitz leaves us with the burden of knowledge -- and the
responsibility ourselves to become involved.
This review originally appeared in "Life Giving
Choices", the newsletter of the Vegetarian Society of El Paso (VSEP).
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