horse-mastThere Are No Boundaries To Persistent, Unending Greed
The American Holocaust Against The Animals - Article Series From The Caring Heart with Dr. Joyce from Spokane Washington

“He coveteth greedily all the day long, but the righteous giveth and spareth not.”  (Proverbs 21:26). 

In his book “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair described, in horrendous detail, the extremely impoverished lives of those persons, mostly immigrants to this country, who worked in the slaughterhouses in Chicago in the early 1900s.    Chicago is very cold in the wintertime, and housing was so inadequate it was hardly decent shelter. Hunger was ongoing.  Children could not go to school because they needed to work at anything they could possibly do to bring more money for family food.  Of course, medical care for these people was a fantasy, even for workers who had been severely wounded working in the slaughterhouses.

Folks, things haven’t changed all that much.  The big slaughterhouse barons of the early 1900s made wage slaves out of many thousands of slaughter-house workers.  Wages were extremely low, with no benefit packages, and medical care for on-the-job injuries was inadequate or nonexistent.  In today’s world, and in the intervening years, slaughterhouse and processing house workers’ wages are still very low, and medical care is still inadequate.  The line speeds of animal processing are much too fast, which causes many more worker injuries.  Knife cuts, amputations, and even deaths still happen. The faster the lines of processing, the more animals can be killed and processed each day, and the more money can be made by the already rich!!

Moreover, again because the pace is too hectic in slaughterhouses, meat can become contaminated with excrement and all sorts of extremely dangerous bacteria, of which E coli is only one.  Many times, contaminated meat has been shipped out for public consumption.  I read that, even after a meat processing company has had to recall a huge number of pounds of tainted meat, they have merely resold that same meat to someone else. Each year seventy six million Americans become sick from food-born illness, and thousands die. 

What is the underlying cause of such misery and unfairness?  To me, it seems obvious.  Today’s meat industry barons are equally as greedy as they were in Upton Sinclair’s day.  IT IS ALL ABOUT MONEY, AND THE POWER TO KEEP MAKING MORE AND MORE MONEY.  Also, the misery knows NO BOUNDARIES.  The way animals are treated in that whole enterprise is unthinkably terrible, not only when they are slaughtered, but their whole lives. Those billions and billions of animals are innocent and helpless.  They have hurt no one.  The people that are harmed and killed because of tainted meat and other very negative effects of the factory farming industry are innocent, too, and have no idea “what’s really in the meat!”  Neither the well-being of people, nor the well-being of animals, can stand in the way of unbridled greed.  

One wonders how things got so out-of-hand.  Aren’t we the wonderful, decent, good USA, which has laws to protect the vulnerable from what amounts to massive abuse?  Dare I mention genocide?  Well, maybe and maybe not.  Seems slippery and cloudy, and gets complicated.  Laws may be passed to protect both animals and people, but not enough laws.  Then too, laws do not do any good unless they are enforced, which calls for inspectors to accurately assess conditions and courts to adequately punish those who break the laws.  Far too often the rich and powerful, the CEOs who pay off those in political power, are allowed to just get by with their cruel shenanigans. The animal processing decision makers, the fast food decision makers, and the politicians have all been in collusion to MAKE ALL THE MONEY, NO MATTER WHO IS HURT, OR HOW SEVERELY. 

So, what events and conditions were really pivotal in causing this society to go wild with factory farming, which involves raising food animals on as grand a scale as possible with no leveling off in view?  Although meat is certainly purchased and served in many settings – homes, hospitals, and regular restaurants, what really seems to have accelerated greatly the eating of meat is the fast food industry, which developed in the 1940s. Carl Karcher was one of the first of the fast food pioneers, developing Carl’s Jr.  Then, the McDonald brothers developed  the Speedee Service System which revolutionized the restaurant business.  Food was prepared and sold like an industrial production line.  Everything was exactly specified, down to number of pickle slices on the hamburgers and number of ketchup squirts.  The idea, too, was to have work forces that needed absolutely minimal training, and could be paid minimal wages.  Teenagers fit that description the best, so many thousands of teenagers have manned fast food places. Of course, a variety of other fast food enterprises developed, including Wendys, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Subway, pizza parlors, and so forth. As we know, fast food restaurants have spread all over the United States, and, more and more, all over the world.  ALL OF THESE HAVE SOLD, AND STILL SELL, MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF FACTORY FARMED MEAT, for better or worse, which makes their CEOs and the factory farming CEOs very rich.  The hamburgers and fried chicken look nice, fresh, and clean, but do the patrons really know WHAT’S IN THE MEAT THEY ARE INGESTING?  One hamburger can contain meat from dozens or even hundreds of cattle, raising the risk of pathogens. 

The very serious, harmful side effects of both factory farming and the fast food industry are so numerous and so far reaching that a whole book is needed to give justice to describing them.  I’ve decided to at least write the following article, touching upon the main areas of harm to individual people and to whole communities.  Actually, with its impact upon global pollution and climate change, factory farming is harming and endangering the entire planet. 

PLEASE READ WHAT I HAVE CAREFULLY RESEARCHED AND AM OFFERING HERE.  PEOPLE REALLY NEED TO “LISTEN UP” AND CHANGE WHAT THEY ARE, BY THEIR DOLLARS, SUPPORTING. 

Thank you for your attention.

REFERENCES

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation.  Harper Perennial.  New York,  2001.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle.  Robert Bentley, Inc.  Cambridge, Mass., 1905.  

Copyright 2018 - Dr. Joyce -  The Caring Heart

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