The Truth Behind The Food Industry In The Jungle, By Upton Sinclair

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In the novel The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair, the unimaginable horrors behind the food industry and fundamental support by capitalism are exposed. Sinclair illustrates the foul unsanitary procedures carried out in the meat packing industry and creates a grotesque image for readers. He quotes, “This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit” (163). In The Jungle, capitalism is what drove the meat processing industries to comply with health hazards and continue the distribution of unsafe products.The food industry in present day
The article highlights and includes the documentary Food, Inc. which exposes the inability of the profit system to provide safe and healthy food for the vast majority of the population. Eric Schlosser investigating journalist quotes, “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000…now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are deliberately hidden from us”. Schlosser also quotes, “Birds are now raised and slaughtered in half the time they were 50 years ago, but now they’re twice as big”. He believes they not only changed the chicken, but they changed the farmer implying that capitalism has taken the place for the need of small scale farming. In addition, Michael Pollan also a journalist believes that the vast array of choices which appears in everyday supermarkets is nothing but an “illusion of diversity”. The advancement of technology and how consumers react to products has been further developed and continues to be in this generation. Food scientists are now genetically modifying and engineering products to satisfy and manipulate consumers to desire more of these unhealthy product choices. The biggest advance in recent years has
Kant quotes, “Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This quotation supports how those who work for capitalists would fall under the minority category while also serving capitalism directly. Kant also believed in three formulations: we should only act on ideas and laws, treat all people as autonomous individuals, and that all people should respect each other’s autonomy in regard to making universal moral decisions. Marx stated that individuals should never be treated simply as a means to an end but rather as ends within themselves. Capitalism exists on the basis that there is a class of individuals who own the means of production, that exploits the working class that maintains and uses the means of production that exploits the working class that maintains and uses that means of production to generate profit for the capitalist class. In conclusion, the current issue of capitalist companies promoting and producing unhealthy and unsafe products within the food industry is fully supported by the evidence and additional sources

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