Meat-packing industry

The meat-packing industry (also spelled meatpacking industry or meat packing industry) handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of meat from animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock. Poultry is generally not included. This greater part of the entire meat industry is primarily focused on producing meat for human consumption, but it also yields a variety of by-products including hides, dried blood, protein meals such as meat & bone meal, and, through the process of rendering, fats (such as tallow).

The William Davies Company facilities in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, circa 1920. This facility was then the third largest hog-packing plant in North America.

In the United States and some other countries, the facility where the meat packing is done is called a slaughterhouse, packinghouse or a meat-packing plant; in New Zealand, where most of the products are exported, it is called a freezing works.^[1] An abattoir is a place where animals are slaughtered for food.

Pork packing in Cincinnati, 1873

The meat-packing industry grew with the construction of the railroads and methods of refrigeration for meat preservation. Railroads made possible the transport of stock to central points for processing, and the transport of products.

History

United States

 

Postcard of pork dressing in Texas, undated

Before the Civil War, the meat industry was localized, with nearby farmers providing beef and hogs for local butchers to serve the local market. Large Army contracts during the war attracted entrepreneurs with a vision for building much larger markets. The 1865–1873 era provided five factors that nationalized the industry:

• The rapid growth of cities provided a lucrative new market for fresh meat.
• The emergence of large-scale ranching, the role of the railroads, refrigeration, and entrepreneurial skills.
• Cattle ranching on a large-scale moved to the Great Plains, from Texas northward.
• Overland cattle drives moved large herds to the railheads in Kansas, where cattle cars brought live animals eastward.
• Abilene, Kansas, became the chief railhead, shipping 35,000 cattle a year, mostly to Kansas City, Milwaukee and Chicago.

In Milwaukee, Philip Armour, an ambitious entrepreneur from New York who made his fortune in Army contracts during the war, partnered with Jacob Plankinton to build a highly efficient stockyard that serviced the upper Midwest. Chicago built the famous Union Stockyards in 1865 on 345 swampy acres to the south of downtown. Armour opened the Chicago plant, as did Nelson Morris, another wartime contractor. Cincinnati and Buffalo, both with good water and rail service, also opened stockyards. Perhaps the most energetic entrepreneur was Gustavus Franklin Swift, the Yankee who operated out of Boston and moved to Chicago in 1875, specializing in long distance refrigerated meat shipments to eastern cities.^[2]

A practical refrigerated (ice cooled) rail car was introduced in 1881. This made it possible to ship cattle and hog carcasses, which weighed only 40% as much as live animals; the entire national market, served by the railroads, was opened up, as well as transatlantic markets using refrigerated ships. Swift developed an integrated network of cattle procurement, slaughtering, meat-packing and shipping meat to market. Up to that time cattle were driven great distances to railroad shipping points, causing the cattle to lose considerable weight. Swift developed a large business, which grew in size with the entry of several competitors.^[3]

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of legislation that led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Another such act passed the same year was the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The new laws helped the large packers, and hurt small operations that lacked economy of scale or quality controls.^[4]

Historian William Cronon concludes:

Because of the Chicago packers, ranchers in Wyoming and feedlot farmers in Iowa regularly found a reliable market for their animals, and on average received better prices for the animals they sold there. At the same time and for the same reason, Americans of all classes found a greater variety of more and better meats on their tables, purchased on average at lower prices than ever before. Seen in this light, the packers' "rigid system of economy" seemed a very good thing indeed.^[5]

Labor issues

See also: The Jungle § Federal response

In the early part of the 20th century, they used the most recent immigrants and migrants as strikebreakers in labor actions taken by other workers, also usually immigrants or early descendants. The publication of the Upton Sinclair novel The Jungle in the U.S. in 1906, shocked the public with the poor working conditions and unsanitary practices in meat-packing plants in the United States, specifically Chicago.

Meat-packing plants, like many industries in the early 20th century, were known to overwork their employees, failed to maintain adequate safety measures, and actively fought unionization. Public pressure to U.S. Congress led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act, both passed in 1906 on the same day to ensure better regulations of the meat-packing industry. Before the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, workers were exposed to dangerous chemicals, sharp machinery, and horrible injuries.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, workers achieved unionization under the CIO's United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). An interracial committee led the organizing in Chicago, where the majority of workers in the industry were black, and other major cities, such as Omaha, Nebraska, where they were an important minority in the industry. UPWA workers made important gains in wages, hours and benefits. In 1957, the stockyards and meat-packing plants employed half the workers of Omaha. The union supported a progressive agenda, including the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. While the work was still difficult, for a few decades workers achieved blue-collar, middle-class lives from it.

Though the meat-packing industry has made many improvements since the early 1900s, extensive changes in the industry since the late 20th century have caused new labor issues to arise. Today, the rate of injury in the meat-packing industry is three times that of private industry overall, and meat-packing was noted by Human Rights Watch as being "the most dangerous factory job in America". The meatpacking industry continues to employ many immigrant laborers, including some who are undocumented workers. In the early 20th century the workers were immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, and black migrants from the South. Today many are Hispanic, from Mexico, Central and South America. Many are from Peru, leading to the formation of a large Peruvian community. The more isolated areas in which the plants are located put workers at greater risk due to their limited ability to organize and to seek redress for work-related injuries.^[6][7][8]

Changing geography

The industry after 1945 closed its stockyards in big cities like Chicago and moved operations to small towns close to cattle ranches, especially in Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. Historically, besides Cincinnati, Chicago and Omaha, the other major meat-packing cities had been South St. Paul, Minnesota; East St. Louis, Illinois; Dubuque, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Minnesota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Sioux City, Iowa.^{[citation needed]}

Rail to truck

Mid-century restructuring by the industry of the stockyards, slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants led to relocating facilities closer to cattle feedlots and swine production facilities, to more rural areas, as transportation shifted from rail to truck. It has been difficult for labor to organize in such locations. In addition, the number of jobs fell sharply due to technology and other changes. Wages fell during the latter part of the 20th century, and eventually, both Chicago (in 1971) and Omaha (in 1999) closed their stockyards. The workforce increasingly relied on recent migrants from Mexico.^{[citation needed]}

Argentina

Argentina had the natural resources and human talent to build a world-class meat-packing industry. However its success in reaching European markets was limited by the poor quality control in the production of their meat and the general inferiority of frozen meat to the chilled meat exported by the United States and Australia. By 1900, the Argentine government encouraged investment in the industry to improve quality. The British dominated the world shipping industry, and began fitting their ships for cold air containers, and built new refrigerated steamers. When the Argentine industry finally secured a large slice of the British market, Pateros and trade restrictions limited its penetration of the Continent.^[9]

China

Meat in China moved from a minor specialty commodity to a major factor in the food supply in the late 20th century thanks to the rapid emergence of a middle-class with upscale tastes and plenty of money. It was a transition from a country able to provide a small ration of meat for urban citizens only to the world's largest meat producer; it was a movement from a handful of processing facilities in major cities to thousands of modern meat-packing and processing plants throughout the country, alongside the rapid growth of a middle-class with spending money.^[10]

Negative effects on meat-packers

Further information: Labor rights in American meatpacking industry

American slaughterhouse workers are three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker.^[11] NPR reports that pig and cattle slaughterhouse workers are nearly seven times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries than average.^[12] The Guardian reports that on average there are two amputations a week involving slaughterhouse workers in the United States.^[13] On average, one employee of Tyson Foods, the largest meat producer in America, is injured and amputates a finger or limb per month.^[14] The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that over a period of six years in the UK, 78 slaughter workers lost fingers, parts of fingers or limbs, more than 800 workers had serious injuries, and at least 4,500 had to take more than three days off after accidents.^[15] In a 2018 study in the Italian Journal of Food Safety, slaughterhouse workers are instructed to wear ear protectors to protect their hearing from the constant screams of animals being killed.^[16] A 2004 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that "excess risks were observed for mortality from all causes, all cancers, and lung cancer" in workers employed in the New Zealand meat processing industry.^[17]

The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] for any period of time—that let's [sic] you kill things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's walking around in the blood pit with you and think, 'God, that really isn't a bad looking animal.' You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them—beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care.

— Gail A. Eisnitz, ^[18]

The act of slaughtering animals or of raising or transporting animals for slaughter may engender psychological stress or trauma in the people involved.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]} A 2016 study in Organization indicates, "Regression analyses of data from 10,605 Danish workers across 44 occupations suggest that slaughterhouse workers consistently experience lower physical and psychological well-being along with increased incidences of negative coping behavior".^[31] In her thesis submitted to and approved by University of Colorado, Anna Dorovskikh states that slaughterhouse workers are "at risk of Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress, which is a form of posttraumatic stress disorder and results from situations where the concerning subject suffering from PTSD was a causal participant in creating the traumatic situation".^[32] A 2009 study by criminologist Amy Fitzgerald indicates, "slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries".^[33] As authors from the PTSD Journal explain, "These employees are hired to kill animals, such as pigs and cows that are largely gentle creatures. Carrying out this action requires workers to disconnect from what they are doing and from the creature standing before them. This emotional dissonance can lead to consequences such as domestic violence, social withdrawal, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD".^[34]

Slaughterhouses in the United States commonly illegally employ and exploit underage workers and illegal immigrants.^[35][36] In 2010, Human Rights Watch described slaughterhouse line work in the United States as a human rights crime.^[37] In a report by Oxfam America, slaughterhouse workers were observed not being allowed breaks, were often required to wear diapers, and were paid below minimum wage.^[38]

Another problem in this context is that the pharmaceutical industry obtains basic materials for its products from the meat-packing industry; for example, tissue extracts from slaughterhouse waste. In the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, this led to the paradoxical situation that mass slaughterhouses were infection drivers due to the bad labor conditions and at the same time suppliers of important therapeutics such as heparin, which subsequently became a scarce commodity. Medical historian Benjamin Prinz has therefore pointed to the fragility of today's healthcare systems, which themselves participate in environmentally destructive and disease-causing production chains.^[39]

Meatpackers

Big Four

By 1900, the dominating meat packers were:^[40]

• Armour
  • Morris (acquired in 1923)
• Cudahy
• Wilson
• Swift

Big Three

In the 1990s, the Big Three were:^[41]

• IBP
• ConAgra Foods
• Excel Corporation

Today

Current significant meat packers in the United States include:^[42]

Beef Packers:

• Tyson Foods
• Cargill Meat Solutions (Excel)
• JBS USA (Swift)
• National Beef

Pork Packers:

• Smithfield Foods
• Seaboard Corporation
• Tyson Foods
• JBS USA
• Cargill Meat Solutions

Broiler Chickens:

• Pilgrim's Pride
• Tyson Foods
• Perdue Farms
• Sanderson Farms

Outside the United States:

• Teys Australia
• JBS S.A. (Brazil)
• BRF S.A. (Brazil)
• Charoen Pokphand Group (Thailand)
• Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company (South Africa)
• Maple Leaf Foods (Canada)
• Schneider Foods (Canada)
• Cargill Proteins (Canada)
• AFFCO Holdings (New Zealand)

See also

•  Food portal

• Animal–industrial complex
• Continuous inspection
• Environmental impact of meat production
• Labor rights in American meatpacking industry
• Slaughterhouse
• Union Stock Yards, Chicago

Footnotes

1. Noted. "Following the call of New Zealand's abandoned freezing works". Noted. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
2. Allan Nevins, The emergence of modern America, 1865-1878 (1927) pp 35-39.
3. Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (1962). pp 25-28
4. Roots, Roger (2001-01-01). "A Muckraker's Aftermath: The Jungle of Meat-packing Regulation after a Century". William Mitchell Law Review. 27 (4). ISSN 0270-272X.
5. William Cronon (2009). Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. W. W. Norton. p. 254. ISBN 9780393072457.
6. "Meat Packing Industry Criticized on Human Rights Grounds". The New York Times. 2005-01-25. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
7. "Blood, Sweat, and Fear". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
8. "Opinion | The Shame of Postville, Iowa". The New York Times. 2008-07-13. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
9. Robert Greenhill, "Shipping and the Refrigerated Meat Trade from the River Plate, 1900–1930." International Journal of Maritime History 4.1 (1992): 65-82.
10. Guanghong Zhou, Wangang Zhang, and Xinglian Xu. "China's meat industry revolution: Challenges and opportunities for the future." Meat science 92.3 (2012): 188-196.
11. "Meatpacking". Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
12. Lowe, Peggy (11 August 2016). "Working 'The Chain,' Slaughterhouse Workers Face Lifelong Injuries". National Public Radio. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
13. "Two amputations a week: the cost of working in a US meat plant". The Guardian. 5 July 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
14. Lewis, Cora (18 February 2018). "America's Largest Meat Producer Averages One Amputation Per Month". Buzzfeed News. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
15. "Revealed: Shocking safety record of UK meat plants". The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. 29 July 2018. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
16. Francesca Iulietto, Maria; Sechi, Paola (3 July 2018). "Noise assessment in slaughterhouses by means of a smartphone app". Italian Journal of Food Safety. 7 (2): 7053. doi:10.4081/ijfs.2018.7053. PMC 6036995. PMID 30046554.
17. McLean, D; Cheng, S (June 2004). "Mortality and cancer incidence in New Zealand meat workers". Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 61 (6): 541–547. doi:10.1136/oem.2003.010587. PMC 1763658. PMID 15150395.
18. Eisnitz, Gail A. (1997). Slaughterhouse: : The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry. Prometheus Books.
19. "Sheep farmer who felt so guilty about driving his lambs to slaughter rescues them and becomes a vegetarian". The Independent. 30 January 2019. Archived from the original on 2022-05-12. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
20. Victor, Karen; Barnard, Antoni (20 April 2016). "Slaughtering for a living: A hermeneutic phenomenological perspective on the well-being of slaughterhouse employees". International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being. 11: 30266. doi:10.3402/qhw.v11.30266. PMC 4841092. PMID 27104340.
21. "Working 'The Chain,' Slaughterhouse Workers Face Lifelong Injuries". Npr.org. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
22. Anna Dorovskikh. "Theses : Killing for a Living: Psychological and Physiological Effects of Alienation of Food Production on Slaughterhouse Workers". Scholar.colorado.edu. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
23. "PTSD in the Slaughterhouse". The Texas Observer. 7 February 2012. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
24. Newkey-Burden, Chas (19 November 2018). "There's a Christmas crisis going on: no one wants to kill your dinner - Chas Newkey-Burden". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
25. "Psychological Distress Among Slaughterhouse Workers Warrants Further Study - SPH - Boston University". School of Public Health. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
26. Dillard, Jennifer (September 2007). "A Slaughterhouse Nightmare: Psychological Harm Suffered by Slaughterhouse Employees and the Possibility of Redress through Legal Reform". ResearchGate.net. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
27. S, Serina; hu (2 March 2018). "'I couldn't look them in the eye': Farmer who couldn't slaughter his cows is turning his farm vegan". Inews.co.uk. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
28. Fox, Katrina. "Meet The Former Livestock Agent Who Started An International Vegan Food Business". Forbes.com. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
29. Lebwohl, Michael (25 January 2016). "A Call to Action: Psychological Harm in Slaughterhouse Workers". The Yale Global Health Review. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
30. Nagesh, Ashitha (31 December 2017). "The harrowing psychological toll of slaughterhouse work". Metro. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
31. Baran, B. E.; Rogelberg, S. G.; Clausen, T (2016). "Routinized killing of animals: Going beyond dirty work and prestige to understand the well-being of slaughterhouse workers". Organization. 23 (3): 351–369. doi:10.1177/1350508416629456. S2CID 148368906.
32. Dorovskikh, Anna (2015). Killing for a Living: Psychological and Physiological Effects of Alienation of Food Production on Slaughterhouse Workers (BSc). University of Colorado, Boulder.
33. Fitzgerald, A. J.; Kalof, L. (2009). "Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates: An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From "The Jungle" Into the Surrounding Community". Organization & Environment. 22 (2): 158–184. doi:10.1177/1350508416629456. S2CID 148368906.
34. "The Psychological Damage of Slaughterhouse Work". PTSDJournal. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
35. Waldman, Peter (29 December 2017). "America's Worst Graveyard Shift Is Grinding Up Workers". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
36. Grabell, Michael (1 May 2017). "Exploitation and Abuse at the Chicken Plant". The New Yorker. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
37. Varia, Nisha (11 December 2010). "Rights on the Line". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
38. Grabell, Michael. "Lives on the Line". Oxfam America. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
39. Prinz, Benjamin (2022-04-01). "How blood met plastics, plant and animal extracts: Material encounters between medicine and industry in the twentieth century". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 92: 45–55. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2022.01.007. ISSN 0039-3681. PMID 35131685. S2CID 246575794.
40. Warren, Wilson J. (November 2009). Tied to the Great Packing Machine: The Midwest and Meatpacking. University of Iowa Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-58729-774-8.
41. Pate, J'Nell L. (2005). America's Historic Stockyards: Livestock Hotels. TCU Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-87565-304-4.
42. Wise, Timothy A.; Rakocy, Betsy. "Hogging the Gains from Trade: The Real Winners from U.S. Trade and Agricultural Policies". Tufts University: Global Development And Environment Institute. Retrieved 2019-08-11.

Further reading

• Arnould, Richard J. "Changing patterns of concentration in American meat packing, 1880–1963." Business History Review 45.1 (1971): 18-34.
• Barrett, James R. Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (U of Illinois Press, 1990).
• Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), pp 207–59.
• Fields, Gary (2003). "Communications, innovation, and territory: the production network of Swift Meat Packing and the creation of a national US market". Journal of Historical Geography. Elsevier BV. 29 (4): 599–617. doi:10.1006/jhge.2002.0415. ISSN 0305-7488.
• Gordon, Steve C. "From Slaughterhouse to Soap-Boiler: Cincinnati's Meat Packing Industry, Changing Technologies, and the Rise of Mass Production, 1825-1870." IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology (1990): 55-67.
• Gras, N.S.B. and Henrietta M. Larson. Casebook in American business history (1939) pp 623–43 on Armour company.
• Hill, Howard Copeland. "The development of Chicago as a center of the meat packing industry." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10.3 (1923): 253-273. in JSTOR
• Horowitz, Roger. Putting meat on the American table: Taste, technology, transformation (Johns Hopkins UP, 2006).
• Horowitz, Roger. Negro and White, Unite and Fight!: A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90 (U of Illinois Press, 1997).
• Kujovich, M. Yeager. "The Refrigerator Car and the Growth of the American Dressed Beef Industry," Business History Review 44 (1970) 460-482.
• Skaggs, Jimmy M. Prime Cut: Livestock raising and meatpacking in the United States, 1607-1983 (Texas A & M UP, 1986).
• Wade, Louise Carroll. Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century (U of Illinois Press, 1987).
• Walsh, Margaret. The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry (1983), strong on pork'
• Walsh, Margaret. "Pork packing as a leading edge of Midwestern industry, 1835-1875." Agricultural History 51.4 (1977): 702-717. in JSTOR
• Walsh, Margaret. "The spatial evolution of the mid-western pork industry, 1835-1875" Journal of Historical Geography 4#1 (1978) 1-22.
• Warren, Wilson J. Tied to the great packing machine: The Midwest and meatpacking (U of Iowa Press, 2007).
• Yeager, Mary (1981). Competition and Regulation: The Development of Oligopoly in the Meat Packing Industry. Greenwich, Connecticut: Jai Press. ISBN 9780892320585. OCLC 7167708.

World

• Barnes, Felicity, and David M. Higgins. "Brand image, cultural association and marketing: 'New Zealand' butter and lamb exports to Britain, c. 1920–1938." Business History (2017): 1-28.
• Lopes, Maria-Aparecida. "Struggles over an 'Old, Nasty, and Inconvenient Monopoly': Municipal Slaughterhouses and the Meat Industry in Rio de Janeiro, 1880–1920s." Journal of Latin American Studies 47.2 (2015): 349-376.
• MacLachlan, Ian. Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada's Beef Commodity Chain (U of Toronto Press, 2001).
• Nützenadel, Alexander. "A Green International? Food Markets and Transnational Politics, c. 1850-1914." in Food and globalization: consumption, markets and politics in the modern world (Berg, 2008) pp: 153-73.
• Perren, Richard. Taste, trade and technology: the development of the international meat industry since 1840 (Ashgate, 2006).
• Silver, Jim (2008-07-24). "The Origins of Winnipeg's Packinghouse Industry: Transitions from Trade to Manufacture". Prairie Forum. 19: 15–30. hdl:10294/262. ISSN 0317-6282.
• Woods, Rebecca JH. "From Colonial Animal to Imperial Edible Building an Empire of Sheep in New Zealand, ca. 1880-1900." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35.1 (2015): 117-136.
• Yeager, Mary. Competition and Regulation: The Development of Oligopoly in the Meat Packing Industry (1981)

External links

External video
Meatpacking: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) on YouTube

• NOW on PBS – Meatpacking in the U.S.: Still a Jungle Out There?
• "Meat Packing Industry Has Responsibility to Reform"
• "Beef's Raw Edges"