Reply #38: The meat industry is so strong in this country that most recalls

[Tinoire]

are voluntary. If you care about this issue, please read 2 books on this subject; they discuss the entire farce of these voluntary recalls. I stopped eating meat for 2 months after reading these books. I've gone back to my carnivorous ways but am very, very careful about my meat now. Even then I think it's a ticking time-bomb.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060938455/102-4488339-7857708?v=glance">Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
by Eric Schlosser

Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz
====

Fast Food Nation

what the papers say

New York Times - "Here is another side of the unfettered money culture that has been celebrated as an exciting orgy of entrepreneurialism and opportunity."

San Francisco Chronicle - Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" is a good old-fashioned muckraking expose in the tradition of "Th American Way of Death" that's as disturbing as it is irresistible ..."

USA Today - Fast Food Nation is the kind of book that you hope young people read because it demonstrates far better than any social studies class the need for government regulation, the unchecked power of multinational corporations and the importance of our everyday decisions."


Christian Science Monitor - Not all of this exposé is dark and dreary. Most, but not all. While the prevailing wisdom suggests the highly efficient business model of McDonald's and other chains is the only way to profit, Schlosser finds evidence to the contrary."[br />
Evening Standard (UK) - If your biggest worry about eating at a fast food restaurant is whether to order a burger and fries or barbecue grilled nuggets and a strawberry milkshake, then swallow hard and think again.

Salon - Schlosser never comes off as a "sky is falling" street-corner raver or bullheaded finger-pointer. His fury is evident, but his voice is measured and his methods are subtle."


Extract from the Guardian (UK) Saturday, 7th April 2001:
http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/mcds/theguardian0704011.html


http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/books/schlosser.html


===========================

Slaughterhouse

Slaughterhouse is available from FARM (PO Box 30654, Bethesda, MD 20824), Humane Farming Association (PO Box 3577, San Rafael, CA 94912), and most bookstores. People who would like to help get this information to the general public should contact FARM and HFA.



Warning: Last paragraph in this extract is NOT for the squeamish.

Slaughterhouse
by Gail A Eisnitz
Prometheus Books, New York, 1997
310 pp; $29.95 hc

<snip>
In the midst of our high-tech, ostentatious, hedonistic lifestyle, among the dazzling monuments to history, art, religion, and commerce, there are the 'black boxes.' These are the biomedical research laboratories, factory farms, and slaughterhouses - faceless compounds where society conducts its dirty business of abusing and killing innocent, feeling beings.
These are our Dachaus, our Buchenwalds, our Birkenaus. Like the good German burghers, we have a fair idea of what goes on there, but we don't want any reality checks. We rationalize that the killing has to be done and that it's done humanely. We fear that the truth would offend our sensibilities and perhaps force us to do something. It may even change our life.

Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association is a gut-wrenching, chilling, yet carefully documented, expose of unspeakable torture and death in America's slaughterhouses. It explodes their popular image of obscure factories that turn dumb 'livestock' into sterile, cellophane-wrapped 'food' in the meat display case. The testimony of dozens of slaughterhouse workers and USDA inspectors pulls the curtain on abominable hellholes, where the last minutes of innocent, feeling, intelligent horses, cows, calves, pigs, and chickens are turned into interminable agony. And, yes, the book may well change your life. Here are some sample quotes (warning! extremely offensive material follows).

The agony starts when the animals are hauled over long distances under extreme crowding and harsh temperatures. Here is an account from a worker assigned to unloading pigs: "In the winter, some hogs come in all froze to the sides of the trucks. They tie a chain around them and jerk them off the walls of the truck, leave a chunk of hide and flesh behind. They might have a little bit of life left in them, but workers just throw them on the piles of dead ones. They'll die sooner or later."

Once at the slaughterhouse, some animals are too injured to walk and others simply refuse to go quietly to their deaths. This is how the workers deal with it: "The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat him to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute... If you get a hog in a chute that's had the shit prodded out of him, and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole (anus)...and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen thighs completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out."


<snip>
http://www.meat.org.uk/slaught.html