Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)

"There were lots of rats, snakes, cockroaches and maggots in the plant," one worker said. "I saw maggots in boxes which contained bags that the chicken would be wrapped in." A worker at another plant described the chicken processed at the plant as "not safe to eat. Every day, I saw black chicken, green chicken, chicken that stank, and chicken with feces on it. Chicken like this is supposed to be thrown away, but instead it would be sent down the line to be processed."
An employee at a third plant said, "The rotten meat is mixed with fresh meat and sold for baby food. We are asked to mix it with the fresh food, and this is the way it is sold. You can see the worms inside the meat."

Slaughterhouse makes plain the fact that meat producers have next to no regard for their employees, the majority of whom are migrant or itinerant workers earning subsistence wages. Licensed to kill morning, noon and night, severe psychological problems and serious physical injuries - many of which stem from having to kill at an amazingly rapid speed as the animals rush past at the rate of thousands an hour - are common amongst meat processors. Working largely undercover, Gail Eisnitz documents her meetings with dozens of them.

But any sympathy the reader might feel at the tales of working class plight pales into insignificance when compared to the abhorrence of the descriptions of the awful pain inflicted in a multitude of ways on animals by meat processing workers, who regard animals merely as raw material to be dismembered as quickly as possible.

"Any other types of violations?"
"Cattle dragged and choked, stuff like that. Knocking 'em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing. They're supposed to be restunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive. I've found them alive clear over to the rump stand, (the plant area where the hide is cut off the hindquarters)."
"How long does it take an animal to get there?"
"They've been completely legged, he said. "Ten minutes maybe. And they run them through an electrical shock system, too."
"Maybe they weren't alive," I said. Could it just be muscle reaction?"
"When they're sucking in air and bellowing, their eyes bugging out? If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything."

Anyone who reads this book will be tempted to question the ethics of the various groups involved in the meat industry - from the growers to the slaughterers, from the butchers to the retailers, to the restaurants and cooks who dish it up. Their questioning might even extend to the vast majority of the human race, who willingly perpetrate the horror in blissful ignorance as to how it got there. Read Slaughterhouse, but prepare to be shocked.

The information in Slaughterhouse should be made widely public, and there needs to be reform before more people die. She did a remarkable job covering all applicable areas of meat-packing: the inhumane treatment of animals, the dangers posed to the employees of the packing industry, the unsanitary...FILTHY...conditions, as well as the political mess surrounding the meat industry. Well done!