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Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America
In pursuit of jobs and economic development, many rural communities have attracted large meat, poultry, and fish processing plants owned by transnational corporations. But what they don't bargain for is the increase in crime, homelessness, school overcrowding, housing shortages, social disorder, cyclical migration, and poverty that inevitably follows.
To shed light on the forces that drive the meat industry and the communities where it locates, Donald Stull, Michael Broadway, and David Griffith have brought together the varying perspectives of anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, journalists, and industry specialists. Despite increased automation, these experts show that meat, poultry, and fish processing remain labor intensive create problems for employees, host communities, and government regulatory agencies.
Since 1906 when Sinclair Lewis exposed the horrors of Chicago meat-packing in The Jungle, consumers have been wary of the process that-even under the best conditions-is an ugly business. Conversely, meat packers are often defensive and distrustful of outside advice and government intervention, even as they look for ways to cut costs and enhance low profit margins.
In an effort to lower costs, meat processors have moved from urban to rural areas, where plants are closer to the supply of raw materials. But rural communities lack a pool of surplus labor and companies end up recruiting immigrants, minorities, and women to work on the plant floors. By examining communities in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina, the authors evaluate the impact rural plants have on regions with few employment opportunities and the strain their presence places on social services, schools, and law enforcement agencies. They also investigate the underlying causes of high rates of injury and personnel turnover within the industry.
Providing an overview of structural and geographical changes occurring in meat processing, the authors explore the factors that sway industry and community decision making and subsequently influence the future of rural America. But more than just an analysis of the current circumstances, Any Way You Cut It proposes alternate routes communities and meat processors can take to reverse deteriorating conditions and avoid potentially explosive predicaments.
To shed light on the forces that drive the meat industry and the communities where it locates, Donald Stull, Michael Broadway, and David Griffith have brought together the varying perspectives of anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, journalists, and industry specialists. Despite increased automation, these experts show that meat, poultry, and fish processing remain labor intensive create problems for employees, host communities, and government regulatory agencies.
Since 1906 when Sinclair Lewis exposed the horrors of Chicago meat-packing in The Jungle, consumers have been wary of the process that-even under the best conditions-is an ugly business. Conversely, meat packers are often defensive and distrustful of outside advice and government intervention, even as they look for ways to cut costs and enhance low profit margins.
In an effort to lower costs, meat processors have moved from urban to rural areas, where plants are closer to the supply of raw materials. But rural communities lack a pool of surplus labor and companies end up recruiting immigrants, minorities, and women to work on the plant floors. By examining communities in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina, the authors evaluate the impact rural plants have on regions with few employment opportunities and the strain their presence places on social services, schools, and law enforcement agencies. They also investigate the underlying causes of high rates of injury and personnel turnover within the industry.
Providing an overview of structural and geographical changes occurring in meat processing, the authors explore the factors that sway industry and community decision making and subsequently influence the future of rural America. But more than just an analysis of the current circumstances, Any Way You Cut It proposes alternate routes communities and meat processors can take to reverse deteriorating conditions and avoid potentially explosive predicaments.
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 24, 1995
23 people want to read
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February 12, 2014
This is a book about meat—or rather, the people who work in the dangerous, low-paying, and highly demanding places that bring meat to the table. The meat industry grinds up and spits out its workers, many of them immigrants from Mexico and Asia, in much the same way it does animals.
ANY WAY YOU CUT IT is a collection of scholarly articles examining the meat industry workforce—some are dry as old bones, others add some color in the form of personal stories and anecdotes.
Advocates for animals and the environment have been quick to criticize factory farms, and for good reason. However, they seem to have made very little headway in actually changing the way the nation eats. These groups should educate themselves on the considerable costs to human lives the industrial meat industry has created. There are the serious injuries and chronic pain of the employees, and there are no doubt psychological factors too. What does it do, for example, to a human being to work on the kill floor---violently killing hundreds of living beings every day, one after the other? One author doesn’t really make the connection, but it seemed obvious to me:
Both violent and property crime climbed throughout the decade in Finney County, while falling in the state [Kansas]. The incidence of child abuse more than tripled to exceed the state average by 50 percent.
Twenty years ago, Merritt Clifton of Animal People discovered a correlation between household violence and sport hunting participation—those counties with the highest numbers of sport hunters also had the worst records of abuse—irrespective of other factors including income and education level. And a slaughterhouse is a far more violent place than a deer trail. Is this the type of society we wish to create?
Speaking of missed connections, another essay details Tyson’s efforts to head off the unionization of its contract poultry “growers,” as they call them:
About the time of the incorporation, a Tyson field representative went to Wright’s farm with a sheaf of papers from company headquarters. They declared: “The drive to organize poultry growers is being funded and led by a network of shady characters and organizations who have a much broader agenda than simply helping growers.” The cover letter went on to accuse the ringleaders of encouraging people to stop eating chicken…trying to unionize poultry workers, advancing civil rights, animal rights, and…they really don’t care about the growers.” One page lists several key groups, including the Institute for Southern Studies, and incorrectly describes them as “socialist,” “quasi-union,” and for “animal rights.”
For the industrial meat industry, the interests of humans, animals, the environment—it’s all just a general threat to the bottom line. As author Erik Marcus has written, Big Ag is made up of some of the biggest sleazebags around. You can’t trust them to do the right thing—not with workers, not with animals, not with the natural world. Are these the people you really want to give your money to every day?
ANY WAY YOU CUT IT is a collection of scholarly articles examining the meat industry workforce—some are dry as old bones, others add some color in the form of personal stories and anecdotes.
Advocates for animals and the environment have been quick to criticize factory farms, and for good reason. However, they seem to have made very little headway in actually changing the way the nation eats. These groups should educate themselves on the considerable costs to human lives the industrial meat industry has created. There are the serious injuries and chronic pain of the employees, and there are no doubt psychological factors too. What does it do, for example, to a human being to work on the kill floor---violently killing hundreds of living beings every day, one after the other? One author doesn’t really make the connection, but it seemed obvious to me:
Both violent and property crime climbed throughout the decade in Finney County, while falling in the state [Kansas]. The incidence of child abuse more than tripled to exceed the state average by 50 percent.
Twenty years ago, Merritt Clifton of Animal People discovered a correlation between household violence and sport hunting participation—those counties with the highest numbers of sport hunters also had the worst records of abuse—irrespective of other factors including income and education level. And a slaughterhouse is a far more violent place than a deer trail. Is this the type of society we wish to create?
Speaking of missed connections, another essay details Tyson’s efforts to head off the unionization of its contract poultry “growers,” as they call them:
About the time of the incorporation, a Tyson field representative went to Wright’s farm with a sheaf of papers from company headquarters. They declared: “The drive to organize poultry growers is being funded and led by a network of shady characters and organizations who have a much broader agenda than simply helping growers.” The cover letter went on to accuse the ringleaders of encouraging people to stop eating chicken…trying to unionize poultry workers, advancing civil rights, animal rights, and…they really don’t care about the growers.” One page lists several key groups, including the Institute for Southern Studies, and incorrectly describes them as “socialist,” “quasi-union,” and for “animal rights.”
For the industrial meat industry, the interests of humans, animals, the environment—it’s all just a general threat to the bottom line. As author Erik Marcus has written, Big Ag is made up of some of the biggest sleazebags around. You can’t trust them to do the right thing—not with workers, not with animals, not with the natural world. Are these the people you really want to give your money to every day?
Displaying 1 of 1 review