Slaughterhouse Analysis

Greeley, Colorado is a meatpacking town. You can smell it even before you see it. The people living there are so used to the smell that they no longer can smell it. The hamburgers and any meat you eat from fast food restaurants come from small places like Greeley. It is an example of industrialization because they are the best paying manufacturing jobs. It is a modern day manufacturing factor.
When the first slaughterhouse opened, it was located in an rural location. One other theme is rural land use because it was surrounded by cattle and maybe a few scattered houses. Most slaughterhouses had cattle shipped to them but not this one. They had their own cattle. If you worked there, the condition of the place was not so great. There were a lot

of injuries like back and shoulders, exposing to a extremely dangerous chemical and even falling in o a vat, or a large tank.
Currier J. Holman and A. D. Anderson decided to start their own meatpacking company in the year 1960. They applied the same labor rules to their meatpacking that the McDonald’s brother had used before. They designed a slaughter house in Denison, Iowa that didn't require the need of skilled employees. The IBP plant was a one story building where each employee stood in one place repeating the same task over and over until the eight hour shift ended. IBP is starting to put their new slaughterhouses in rural areas so they can have the feedlots near by. They are making sure to be away from urban land so they are away from most of the human population. IBP is also taking the leftover bones and blood from the animals to make byproducts.
Holman and three other IBP executives were planning to ship their product to New York's biggest beef are. They agreed to ship a whole lot f meat and Holman even agreed to playing the five-cent commission. Later, IBP got fined a total of $7,000 by the judge Burton Roberts but he decided not to punish Holman.
Ruben Ramirez was seventeen years old when he arrived at Chicago. He didn't know who to speak english but he still found a job at a old processing company. Later, he engaged in the union. He also became an American citizen and loved his new country. He became the first Latino to be head of a local meatpacking union.
ConAgra is the largest meatpacking company. It is the largest food suppliers North America. When Charles “Mike” Harper took over the company, they started to lose money. The Justice Department says that ConAgra cheated farmers by changing the way the crops would looks they could get it for cheaper then spraying water on them after being bought just so they could sell it for more.
To conclude this chapter, the author talks about the smell of a slaughterhouse once more. There are three different odors: burning hair and blood, a greasy smell and rotten eggs. A IBP executive assured people that the new plant in Lexington would not smell as bad as others.

Chapter 8:
In this chapter, the author is writing about all the different injuries that have happened to workers to work at a slaughterhouse.

He also visits a slaughterhouse and gets a tour of the place. When walking through the place, he was warned that they would step on blood so he should tuck his pants into his boots. When he is walking in, he sees employees, mostly women, slicing meat with sharp knives. They slice one and then grab another right after. A few workers even carve the meat with a instrument called Whizzards. The Whizzed looks like a Norelco razor. Some employees were even sweating although it was freezing cold inside. There is a floor called the kill floor, on the kill floor there areas many cows that are stripped out of their skin and they are dangling from strings that are attached to the ceiling. The author now gets feels like he is in a slaughterhouse. He sees people pulling out the kidneys with their bare hands. The sight was very disturbing. The slaughterhouses are located in a rural area which make one of the theme rural land use. Another theme is folk culture because it means traditions that are made by rural groups and the slaughterhouse is how meat gets packed instead of any other

way.
The injury is about three times higher than the injury rate in a typical factory. Many people cut themselves as the line process speeds up. Everyone tries to stay alert of the next person. If a employee gets hurt, they have the right to report the injury but most told the author that they were under pressure about not reporting the injuries. If the worker decides not to report the injury, a supervisor of the slaughterhouse will give them an easier job to do. If the injury is extremely serious, a Mexican worker is offered a few days off to go back home.
A man named Jesus was once cleaning at night and one of his coworkers forget to turn off a machine so he lost two of his fingers. The supervisor was strict and said “If one hand is no good, use the other.” Another worker lost a hand in a machine.
A man named Raoul was injured at the slaughterhouse. He had a deep cut in his shoulder that had to be sewn shut. After he got his prescription and got his stitches, he was taken back to the slaughterhouse and was put in the production line. The rest of the day, Raoul was wiping blood off of cardboard boxes with the hand that was not injured.
Kenny Dobbins was another injured employee.

One day, Kenny got hurt when he heard someone yell “watch out” ot him. Even though he caught the ninety pound box with one hand, he was thrown against the momentum belt because of the massive weight. Kenny went to the doctors who bandaged his hand and he was free to go home. He stayed at home for a few days but then returned back to work. Kenny had been instructed to do light duty after his injury. Kenny recovered after a few weeks and went back to Greeley plant to work. He got remarried but was still loyal to the company. One day, Kenny was working and he saw that someone was about get hurt. He yelled out “watch out” but the employee didn't hear him. So he ran up to him and saved him. He then got an award for saving a co

worker.
The chapter is concluded by talking about Kenny's personal life and house his wife and him were talking to the author. Kenny was used and he had no more body parts to give. He was treated like trash. But now, he is forty-six and as strong as ever.