Meat Packing Industry In The Early 1900's

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In the early 1900’s, the meat packing industry was on the rise due to the industrial revolution in America during the late 1800’s. With the ability to mass produce food, there was a lot of competition and corruption. There were the few large corporations with the few extremely wealthy owners, while the majority of people were in the slums of life barely making enough to eat. In today’s meat packing industry there are some that would argue that food safety and working conditions/safety have not improved with diseases being spread and workers still suffering in the workplace. However, the food safety and working conditions have drastically improved because of government involvement with regulations and food laws passed. Therefore, the meat packing …show more content…
But knives somehow manage to get past it.” There is a large danger to be around knives working so fast all the time. Another thing that affects working conditions is the pace. Schlosser describes it as this: “Twenty years ago, new plants in the High Plains slaughtered about 175 cattle an hour. Today some plants slaughter up to 400 cattle an hour.” Later it says “As the pace increases, so does the risk of accidental cuts.” The working conditions in some Americans' eyes didn’t seem to change as people still ran the risk of being injured often and they had to work as fast as possible to not fall behind. On top of this, the food safety is not great. There are diseases spreading through them and people are getting sick from eating them. It says this in Fast Food Nation “Every day in the United States roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a foodborne disease, 900 are hospitalized and fourteen die.” The illness the food was spreading was running rampant around America and caused serious

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