Chapters and Pages Covered:
The third quarter of the book was chapters six, seven, and eight, consisting of pages 133-190.
Main Topics:
In chapter six the main topics that were discussed were price controlling of meat, and how the top meat buyers are only buying from high up companies, not the actual hard working ranchers. Also poultry started going through the same price holding problem as meat, showing up all the way back when McDonalds first came out with the chicken Mc nugget. This chapter was hard to read, just because I really felt for the people running the ranches out west, they are the ones working their butts off, yet they are making barely any money off of their cattle, and for many the money that they are making doesn't cover the costs of living and running the ranch so they end up in debt.
In chapter seven the main topic was that of meatpacking companies. There are many meatpacking companies around the United States, and the largest of them is controlled by ConAgra . While in the previous chapter I learned of one rancher who was raising his cattle on the natural grass land, the feedlots that ConAgra runs are only feeding their cattle grain, and a lot of grain! A typical steer will consume more than three thousand pounds of grain during it's stay at a feedlot, all to make the cow gain four hundred pounds. This is crazy to me, considering what we learned about grain and how wasteful it is to feed it to cows. This chapter also looked at immigrants working for the meatpacking companies, and how they were taken advantage of being paid poorly, while also working in a hazardous environment. Normal everyday towns are being turned into ghettos were there is violence and crime, which is scary to think of. These meatpacking companies are only thinking of themselves and making a profit, they clearly don't care about the people who reside in the community.
Lastly, in chapter eight a whole slew of topics were touched on, but the main ones were what goes on behind the scenes at a slaughterhouse and the injuries that occur at the slaughterhouse. I will admit that reading about the slaughterhouses and what they do to the cows, and just how the whole thing is ran really made me sad, almost to the point of tears. Then to find out at the end of the chapter that a man who was a loyal worker at a slaughterhouse for many years, and was hospitalized many and I mean MANY times because of the injuries he got while on the job, was fired without even receiving a phone call really upset me. The scariest thing of all is that OSHA wasn't even concerned about what was going on at these slaughterhouses. All in all this chapter was very hard to read!
Terminology/Things I Learned:
There wasn't really any terminology to learn in these chapters, but there definitely was plenty of information to take in. After reading chapter eight I am completely horrified and disgusted with slaughterhouses that treat animals so badly! I think the biggest thing I am taking away from these three chapters is that animals, and people are treated so poorly when it comes to the meat industry! I honestly am saddened that this is how things are run!!!
Implications:
I don't even know where to start with how upset I am about how things are run in this country. I feel like the implications list could go on and on, but to me the major implications would have to be that we are taking work away from hard working americans, we are being extremely wasteful by feeding all of these cattle grain, we are endangering the lives of Americans and immigrants, and sadly all of this is being done because of the demand for meat by the American people. I don't remember the statistic of how much meat a person in the United States eats annually, but I do know that we are eating too much! I wish I could make everyone read chapters six, seven, and eight just to get an idea of what's really happening behind the scenes of the meat industry!
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