Meat Industry Essay

The following sample essay on Meat Industry. The movie that I chose to write about is called Modern Meat and it is produced by frontline. The movie exposes the truth about the history of our meat and diseases. The movie explains how the united states meat industry was dramatically change in the early 19 50s to increase productivity as well as profit. This process would have continued if it wasn’t for the big outbreak that got the public’s attention. The outbreak that was an e coli outbreak occurred in 1993; this outbreak distributed infected meat through a fast food chain called Jack in the box.

The reason this radicalized the industry is because before this food poisoning was considered to only cause stomach aches and minor symptoms but in this outbreak had four fatal casualties which were children and affected nearly 700 people. In the 1950s the American beef industry started changing the diet of cattle feeding them corn instead of feeding them grass.

This change had tremendous effects on the cows they grew much faster. This effect made the cow breeders a lot of money because it mean less turnover time from the time the cattle is born until they are killed and sold.Cows that are fed grass grow to a maturity rate where they get killed at the age of about four or five years old. Cows that are fed corn are fully grown and killed at the age of fourteen months. This change in industry has been very profitable but at the cost of the cows health and digestion.

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The corn affects the cow’s digestion because cow’s digestion is built to digest grass not corn. The second big change in the industry that occurred in the 1950s was in the movement of cows from green pastures to feeding lots. The problem with the feeding lots is that the cows are forced to live in manure they sleep walk all over manure.

Feed lots increase the ability of microorganism to be passed from cow to cow. In these feed lots it estimated that up to ? of cows have e coli bacteria in their stomach. Many cows have health issues and to combat this ranchers purchases at least half of antibiotics sold in the U. S to put into the cows food to help them fight viruses. The cows are eating these antibiotics and it is affecting us because we eat the cows, humans are becoming resistant to antibiotics and a large part of the blame is going in to the meat industry. Conditions in the packing plant have a direct effect on food safety amburgers used to be the leftover meat from butchering one cow, but now hamburgers come from many cows which mean that we are potentially getting more bacteria in our meat. The jack in the box case exposed that meat inspection program had not changed since 1906. After the outbreak Jack in the box implemented a system called HACCP wich was created by NASA when they were trying to avoid food poisoning in outer space voyages. HASSP is quality control unit is helps reduce the possibility of serving meat with infections buy implementing strict guidelines the meat packing plant has to follow.

Some of these guidelines call for: burgers to get cooked thoroughly cutting surfaces clean, cooling temperature to be correct, and make employees wear gloves. I feel that the meat packing industry is very irresponsible their main priority should be promoting quality meat not profit. I feel the industry leaders have created a culture where they compete in prices by undercutting one another. This action puts the consumers at risk of getting food poisoning all because of profit.In the movie there was a lady named Patsy Macke that was a food inspector, she tried to speak out about what she saw at a meat packing plant and she was fired. I feel this type of action by the USDA exposes the fact that they are turning a blind eye to the health of the consumers they are supposed to be protecting. I understand that employees at the USDA are doing what they are told, but there is a social responsibility of telling the public what really is going on in the meat packing industry. This action of firing Patsy Macke shows what a bad leader can do in a company in discouraging other people from coming forward.