When people purchase their meat, they seldom think about the diseases that may come with it. They are confident the meat they are buying is the highest quality their money can afford. However, now and then, there is news of contaminated meat and recalls. This questions the role of the government and its obligation to inform and to serve the public. In the past, the government has passed rules and laws such as the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and Kevin’s Law. However, they have proved to be insufficient and required a long process to pass such regulations. To a certain extent, government should further impose actions to ensure the safety of the American public.
Policies that the government has previously passed are rather lenient. The policies allow companies to take advantage of the loop-hole that has been provided for them. Under federal law, employers are not required to verify that a worker's identification documents are authentic (Source 6). This allows the employment of numerous illegal workers who are willing to work long hours for little pay. The greed of the meat industries increase as there are abundant supplies of hardworking low waged-workers that can be replaced when necessary. Companies such as IBP are fond of illegal immigrants because they can be pushed to work in dangerously fast paces due to the fear of replacement and the deportation by the INS. However, what these people do not know is that the meat industries and the INS have been conspiring with one another. The INS allows the meat-packing firms to hire replacement workers before it steps in and removes illegal employees in exchange for bribes (Hedgers). Rule and regulations should be strictly enforced to ensure that there are no ambiguities.
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Works Cited
Eshoo, Anna. "Eshoo Introduces Kevin's Law." Congreswoman Anna G. Eshoo. N.p., 30 Jun 2005. Web. 30 Mar 2011.
Hedgers, Stephen J. "The New Jungle." U.S. News & World Report 23 Sept. 1996: 34+. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 27 Feb. 2011.
Kowalcyk, Barbara. "Kevin's Story." The Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention. cfi, n.d. Web. 30 Mar 2011.
Moss, Michael. "The Burger That Shattered Her Life."New York Times 03 Oct 2009: n. pag. Web. 30 Mar 2011
Pasour, E.c. Jr. "We can Do Better than Governement Inspection of Meat." Freeman Ideas on Liberty48.5 (1998): n. pag. Web. 30 Mar 2011.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin company, 2002. Print.
Sinclair, Upton. "The Jungle: Chapter 9." Berkely Digital Library SunSite. Project Gutenberg, 16 Sept 1996. Web. 30 Mar 2011.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is about a Lithuanian family living in Chicago in the 1900’s. They had faith in the American dream, hoping to start a new and successful life. Unfortunately they were deprived of they hopes and dreams. They were placed in the middle of a society where only the strongest and richest survived. The rich keep getting richer and the poor get even poorer. Jurgis and his family went to extreme lengths just in hopes of finding a job, they were forced to travel in heavy rain, strong winds, and thick snow, even when they were sick, in fear of losing their jobs. The Jungle pointed out many flaws in society such as filthy meat and sickening work conditions.
The difficult living situations for many people in the early 20th century were discussed in the novel The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair. The book describes an immigrant family’s struggle to survive after moving to America. The family experiences unsafe working conditions, dangerous child labor and poverty. Sinclair uses these images to shed light on some of America’s troubles, to disparage capitalism and to promote socialism.
Taylor, Alexander and Sunaura Taylor, “Is It Possible to Be a Conscientious Meat Eater?” Rpt in Current Issues and Enduring Questions. Barnet, Sylvia and Hugo Bedau. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins. 2011. Print. 199-204.
Gabriel Kolko is one of American historians and authors. He wrote a book named “The Triumph of Conservatism: A Re-interpretation of American History, 1900-1916”, and “Meat Inspection: Theory and Reality” is an article in that book. It introduced about Meat Inspection Act in Progressive Era: the main reasoned why it happened, how it affected on legislation, and how government- especially president Roosevelt- executed the new law. Through this article, Kolko also showed his opinion about supporting “free market” and condemning “political capitalism”.
Author Upton Sinclair published the novel The Jungle in 1906. In his novel, Sinclair wrote of a Lithuanian immigrant family who moved to Chicago in the early twentieth century, who was struggling to make ends meet. The author explained how immigrants in this time era experienced difficulties adapting to the new society of America, and its conditions. Sinclair’s novel described how immigrants’ lives, experiences, and choices were effected by social class, racism, and sexism. He produced very strong examples, some more significant than others, which illustrated how immigrants were effected.
Sinclair’s The Jungle, is his fictionalized report of Chicago's Packingtown. It traces a family of Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago, and describes the horrifying living and working conditions they endure. Through Jurgis, the protagonist, and his family, Sinclair unfolds the tragedy of suffering of all Packinghouse workers in their pursuit of the American Dream. He gives a detailed description about their ordeals, from their lodging at boardinghouses to their buying of cheated house,...
In Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” the use of animalistic terms and connotations in the depictions of both the people and the politics created persuasive arguments for socialism and against capitalism.
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, emphasizes the importance in changing to become a thriving society through socialism. Sinclair writes his novel to show the corruption that occurs as a result of capitalism. Jurgis’ family is in search for a better life in America where he believes he will make enough pay to support his family. The novel shows that poverty is in control over the working class, but the working class still has a desperation for money. In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair pushes for Socialism by showing Jurgis’ struggle to find work, the hardships of the packingtown workers, and the inequality of all men in this capitalistic society.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair exemplifies a muckraking style in its often gory depictions of life in a meat packing factory, Sinclair writes of how the meat packing industry exploits its workers, many of whom are uneducated and poor in the same way a capitalist government exploits it's working class. Sinclair uses Symbolism in terms of physical objects, Objects that serve a metaphorical purpose, and oppressive tone, to persuade the reader that Capitalism leads to the declination and corruption of America and that the only way to remedy this is socialistic government.
“The Jungle” is a sociological novel, the work of public and literature heritage. The story is about the hard destiny of Lithuanian immigrants who seek for freedom and justice in America that become the hostages of merciless socialistic labor system in the United States. The cruel story takes place in the naturalistic scenes of gloomy slaughterhouses of Chicago, where, in monstrous miasmatic of demoralization, the hero flay the dead tubercular carcasses. With the help of grandiose rhetorical techniques like metaphor, parallelism, simile, key words, amplification and outstanding verbal approaches, Upton Sinclair won the hearts of thousands people due to his heartfelt language of explicit naturalism and showed the oppressing atmosphere of socialism.
Upton Sinclair’s often quoted remark about aiming for the heart and hitting the stomach definitely rings true when reading The Jungle. Most readers mistook it for another muckraking effort, on unsanitary conditions in the packinghouses. If Sinclair had not written the last three of four chapters of the book then it would have read much more like a social protest novel.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
The meat packing industry in the U.S is one of the top industries that make an example of bringing corruption to new heights. According to the article “Corrupt American Food Industry is too powerful”, the meat packing industry obtains far more power than what should be acquired. The people of America have the right to know what process the meat they are consuming goes through in order for it to sit in their refrigerators. The American people should have the right to know what kind of cruel difficulties come into play when it comes down to the meat industry. The largest meat packing industries make their money by slaughtering animals, and harming living beings behind closed doors. “Welcome to the land of the free, where we consider prioritizing money over clean resources and human and animal welfare” (Ray1) is used to demonstrate the way the meat packing industry within the Unites States operates (1).
Throughout Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the author demonstrates the greed of Capitalism and how it gives politicians and businessmen the ability to exploit the immigrants population. Sinclair's main purpose in naming the book, The Jungle, is to put the reader's focus on the heartless politics of Capitalism. If he had named the book Stockyards or Packingtown, a person's concentration may be solely on these places. It is evident that Capitalism does not equally distribute the industries ruling, but rather allows certain groups to dominate the workers. The businessmen and politicians took advantages of this right and did not allow the immigrants to respond. They treated them very poorly, often working them so hard that they died or suffered from life long injuries. Since the story's main setting is in Packingtown, the reader is familiarized with this town and is engrossed with its surroundings. With the title The Jungle, the reader will want to closely examine why Sinclair chose this title instead. With another name, the reader might have been inclined to get distracted by the gruesome details and not have realized the Socialist concept that he was trying to convey. This title was necessary to enthrall the reader's mind to think about his purpose.
Most of us do not think twice about the foods we pick up from the supermarket. Many Americans have a preconceived belief that the food being sold to us is safe, and withholds the highest standard of quality. Certainly, compared to many places in the world, this is true. But is the United States sincerely trying to carry out these standards, or have we begun to see a reverse in the health and safety of our food- and more explicitly in our meat? Jonathan Foer, author of “Eating Animals” argues for reform within the food industry- not only for the humane treatment of animals but moreover for our own health. Although Foer exposes the ills within the food industries in order to persuade readers to change their diets for the better, his “vegetarianism or die” assessment may be too extreme for most Americans. The true ills do not start with the meat, but with industrialized production of it through methods practiced by factory farming.