...Introduction According to the Human Rights Watch, “the meat packing industry is considered as the most dangerous job factory job in America.” (Human Rights Watch, 2005). People employed in slaughterhouses are exposed many types of hazards on a daily basis that can jeopardize their health. Since the 1900s, there has been a significant incline in the demand for meat within the United States, which requires more people to work in production. (2013). A majority of these employees are classified as being a minority, having low socioeconomic status, and living in poverty. The conditions of these slaughterhouses are hazardous and dangerous and many employees are prone to exposure to more diseases due to the high rate of unsanitary factors such as animal bodily fluid on floors, hooks, walls, and tools. Injuries often occur in this work environment are due to quick speeds of the process lines and the amount of time employees are given to slaughter each animal. (Food Empowerment Project, 2014). These employees are also vastly underpaid. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In May 2012, the median annual wage for slaughterers and meat packers was $24,330. The median annual wage for meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers was $22,830 in May 2012.” (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). These people endanger their lives every day due to the high volume of work, extended hours, and contact with biological, physical, and chemical agents. This environmental injustice raises...
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...In 1906, Upton Sinclair published his best-selling muckraking novel The Jungle which exposed the horror stories that occurred in the meatpacking industry. Majority of people in 2017 would agree that his book is only a piece of history in our improved modern world, but what many people are unaware of is that horrifying working conditions within factory farms still exist today. Workers in the meat industry consist mainly of vulnerable people who are exposed to an outrageous amount of physical danger and emotional stress. In order to understand the issue, light must be shed on the background of the workers. About 38% of slaughterhouse employees are born outside of the U.S. and a portion of them are undocumented. Meat-processing facilities often...
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...Crossing with the Virgin Can you imagine being confined in a world that has you taken for granted and full of mental abuse? Crossing the Mexican border is a journey and new beginning for many undocumented workers. In their eyes it’s a path for many privileges and opportunities. They feel as if all the hardship and struggles they face will just fade away. The narratives of Crossing with the Virgin portray conflicts that occur for undocumented workers crossing the Mexican border. For many illegal immigrants I personally feel that finding a stable job will be difficult, they will be taken advantage of, and eventually they will either be incarcerated or be deported back to their country. Dago is a man that lives in the city of Mexico with his wife and two daughters. Both he and his wife Elena own two beautiful houses. Dago works at a Levi Strauss’s Mexico division as an executive while his wife is a manager of a computer equipment company. Dago and his wife enjoyed the life they were living and were satisfied with everything that has happened in their lives. But, one day Dago was informed by his boss that the company he was working for was closing. Life for Dago went completely downhill from this point on. Dago was forced to move to his other house and eventually had to sell that house due to financial problems. His wife wanted a divorce and Dago had no choice but to cross the border. Dago arrived in Nebraska and expected an enhanced lifestyle but, things just got worse for Dago...
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...Although agriculture affects many, those who witness its negatives first hand are workers. Agriculture in today’s terms can no longer be called farming. Regarded as “agribusiness” by an environmentalist group known as Grace Communications, factory workers are often employed and controlled by corporate owners. These corporations have an unexplainable upper hand over workers and other farmers. Two types of corporate farming are common in the U.S: contract farming and vertical...
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... Karcher did not grow up in the restaurant business, rather a string of opportunities and risk created a perfect storm for Karcher. At a young age Carl went to work for family in California. After 3 years he delivered fresh bread for a bakery. He was now married and took out a loan to buy a hot dog stand. 4 years later he opened his first restaurant Carl’s DriveIn BBQ. This was all happening at the same time McDonald’s was becoming big in Southern California. In 30 years Carl’s Jr had over 300 restaurants. By managing risk and a good business model, Carl Karcher thrived using freedom right philosophy. He also happened to be a political conservative. Order left philosophy is brought to life in Fast Food Nation in the horrific plight of Kenny Dobbins, a factory worker. Kenny suffered a herniated disc in his back from catching a box. Kenny was hit by a train. Kenny was chemically burned inside and outside his body. Kenny had a massive heart attack on the job, and while recovering in the hospital, he was fired. Other than Job, Kenny may have the worst luck of any human being....
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...were most always brick and three to four stories in height. The animals shipped in were usually grass fed and corn fattened. That all changed half way through the 19th century. What was once, one of the nations best paying industries, has established a migrant-worker oriented work force and according to those studying the situation has left workers powerless to correct inhuman work place conditions. Although newspapers are publishing the results of the changes, and other groups offering suggestions of what needs to be done to help the worker, the whole dilemma has stagnated without being corrected. Without the support of banding together and forming unions the immigrant workers remain at the mercy of their employers. The efforts, if they can be called that, amount to for the most part, empty suggestions when actions are long overdue. The early sixties found the meat packing industry cutting wages in half and dropping many benefits. Unions no longer had the hold needed to protect the worker. Workers were for the most part immigrants from Mexico who accepted the meatpackers’ low wages and tried to successfully keep pace with the high speed operation of which the industry demanded. More and faster production left workers extremely vulnerable to an industry already fraught with accidents. Kutalik called it a “meaner industry.” Crisis was inevitable as the meatpacking industry restructured, closing old, union controlled, urban plants while setting up newer non-union plants and recruiting...
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...of strangers and shelves of packets, fake smiles from bored checkout assistants isn't there a better way to get our food? Supermarkets wield immense power over the way we grow, buy and eat our food. They are shaping our environment, our health and the way we interact socially. These changes have gone unchallenged because consumers have been sucked into superstore lifestyles, persuaded that the opportunity to select from six different brands of cut-price oven chips at three in the morning represents choice and value. What’s Wrong With SUPERMARKETS But the tide may be turning. Unease at the true cost of supermarket food is spreading among consumers, who are beginning to join forces with the farmers and workers who have always known that supermarket 'choice' is a bad deal. This booklet aims to help campaigners get to grips with the reality of supermarket domination and argues why we must start looking for alternatives. Researched and written by Lucy Michaels and the Agriculture Project at Corporate Watch What’s wrong with Supermarkets www.corporatewatch.org.uk What's Wrong with Supermarkets? Overview: Supermarkets sweep up 2 3 10 11 The supermarkets we know today started in Britain with the Cooperative Movement in the 19th century. This was a group of independent local retailers controlled by its consumer members, who sold un-adulterated foods at prices working people could afford. It was in post-war...
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...CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA An Interpretive History TENTH EDITION James J. Rawls Instructor of History Diablo Valley College Walton Bean Late Professor of History University of California, Berkeley TM TM CALIFORNIA: AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY, TENTH EDITION Published by McGraw-Hill, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Previous editions © 2008, 2003, and 1998. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning. Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to customers outside the United States. This book is printed on acid-free paper. 1234567890 QFR/QFR 10987654321 ISBN: 978-0-07-340696-1 MHID: 0-07-340696-1 Vice President & Editor-in-Chief: Michael Ryan Vice President EDP/Central Publishing Services: Kimberly Meriwether David Publisher: Christopher Freitag Sponsoring Editor: Matthew Busbridge Executive Marketing Manager: Pamela S. Cooper Editorial Coordinator: Nikki Weissman Project Manager: Erin Melloy Design Coordinator: Margarite Reynolds Cover Designer: Carole Lawson Cover Image: Albert Bierstadt, American (born...
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...E SSAYS ON TWENTIETH-C ENTURY H ISTORY In the series Critical Perspectives on the Past, edited by Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig Also in this series: Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes, eds., Oral History and Public Memories Tiffany Ruby Patterson, Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life Lisa M. Fine, The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. Van Gosse and Richard Moser, eds., The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., History and September 11th John McMillian and Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited David M. Scobey, Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography Allida M. Black, ed., Modern American Queer History Eric Sandweiss, St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past Sharon Hartman Strom, Political Woman: Florence Luscomb and the Legacy of Radical Reform Michael Adas, ed., Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History Jack Metzgar, Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered Janis Appier, Policing Women: The Sexual Politics of Law Enforcement and the LAPD Allen Hunter, ed., Rethinking the Cold War Eric Foner, ed., The New American History. Revised and Expanded Edition E SSAYS ON _ T WENTIETH- C ENTURY H ISTORY Edited by ...
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...Bad Bug Book Handbook of Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Introduction Food safety is a complex issue that has an impact on all segments of society, from the general public to government, industry, and academia. The second edition of the Bad Bug Book, published by the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides current information about the major known agents that cause foodborne illness. The information provided in this handbook is abbreviated and general in nature, and is intended for practical use. It is not intended to be a comprehensive scientific or clinical reference. Under the laws administered by FDA, a food is adulterated if it contains (1) a poisonous or otherwise harmful substance that is not an inherent natural constituent of the food itself, in an amount that poses a reasonable possibility of injury to health, or (2) a substance that is an inherent natural constituent of the food itself; is not the result of environmental, agricultural, industrial, or other contamination; and is present in an amount that ordinarily renders the food injurious to health. The first includes, for example, a toxin produced by a fungus that has contaminated a food, or a pathogenic bacterium or virus, if the amount present in the food may be injurious to health. An example of the second...
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...COLLAPSE HOW S O C I E T I E S CHOOSE TO FAIL OR S U C C E E D JARED DIAMOND VIK ING VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England First published in 2005 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 13579 10 8642 Copyright © Jared Diamond, 2005 All rights reserved Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed/Jared Diamond. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-670-03337-5 1. Social history—Case studies. 2. Social change—Case studies. 3. Environmental policy— Case studies. I. Title. HN13. D5 2005 304.2'8—dc22...
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