NEW YORK TIMES Editorial: What Meat Means

[Guest guest]

IndianCivilization, Deosaran Bisnath

<deobisnath> wrote:

 

The toll on humans - the meat workers and

eaters - is immense. Why bother? You don't

have to eat canned or processed meat products;

in fact you don't need to eat dead flesh or

dead seafood.

 

Regards,

 

Deosaran

------------

 

 

EDITORIAL

What Meat Means

 

Published: February 6, 2005

 

Most Americans do not want to know how the meat they eat is produced,

if only

so they can continue to eat it. Nearly every aspect of meat

production in

America is disturbing, from the way animals are raised, to inadequate

inspection of the final product. When it comes to what happens in the

slaughterhouse, most of us mentally avert our eyes. Yet in the past

decade, the

handling of livestock on their way to the killing floor has actually

been one

of the parts of the business that has improved most significantly.

What is most

alarming at the slaughterhouse is not what happens to the animals -

they have

already met their fate. It is what happens to the humans who work

there.

 

A large slaughterhouse is the truly industrial end of industrial

farming. It is

a factory for disassembly. Its high line speeds place enormous

pressure on the

workers hired to take apart the carcasses coming down the line. And

because the

basic job of the line is cutting flesh - hard, manual labor - the

dangers are

very high for meat workers, whose flesh is every bit as vulnerable as

that of

the pork or beef or chicken passing by.

 

The problem of worker safety is compounded by the fact that

meatpackers, driven

by the brutal economics of the industry, always try to hire the

cheapest labor

they can find. That increasingly means immigrants whose language

difficulties

compound the risks of the job. The result, according to a new report

by Human

Rights Watch, is "extraordinarily high rates of injury" in conditions

that

systematically violate human rights.

 

In fact, the report finds, some major players in the American meat

industry

prey upon a large population of immigrant workers who are either

ignorant of

their fundamental rights or are undocumented aliens who are afraid of

calling

attention to themselves. As a result, those workers often receive

little or no

compensation for injuries, and any attempt to organize is met with

hostility.

 

The industry has little incentive to improve conditions on its own,

except a

decent regard for human rights. The only reasonable prospect of

improvement

depends on the enforcement of federal and state law. Unfortunately,

those laws

at present are too weak and too riddled with loopholes to provide the

regulations needed to increase worker safety and improve workers'

rights. A

systematic regulatory look at the meat industry, with an eye to

toughening

standards, is desperately needed.

 

In recent years, Americans have had the habit of thinking of wide-

scale

workplace abuses as foreign affairs - the kind of thing that turns up

in

Southeast Asia, for instance. And, in a sense, the abuses found in

American

slaughterhouses are international matters, because so many of the

workers are

actually citizens of other countries. But in this case, the abuses

are taking

place right at home, and as part of our food chain. In a carb-

conscious era,

the meat processing industry should be a place of opportunity for

workers who

put all that protein on your plate. Right now, that is hardly the

case.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/opinion/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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