In the fall quarter of this year, I
was assigned to a critical thinking and writing class as was every other
freshman. I was curious when I found out it was titled the “Rhetoric of
Recipes” (I honestly thought we would be analyzing recipes). In this class I
was introduced to Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, a book whose
subtitle, “The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”, should have been my first
clue that my outlook on our nation’s food industry would be changed forever. As
I’ve mentioned before, I had considered becoming a vegetarian prior to this
project, and after reading this book I began considering it again. The one
chapter that sent me over the edge is titled “The Most Dangerous Job.” The
graphic details of the horrendous events that happen in a slaughterhouse
somewhere in the High Plains will be seared into my brain for the rest of my
life. This particular slaughterhouse gives a glimpse to what all industrialized
slaughterhouses are like. I will briefly recount some of the most disturbing
parts here, but I highly recommend reading this book on your own. You will
probably never look at hamburger, or steak the same way again, I know I don’t.
Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast
Food Nation, is a correspondent for The
Atlantic Monthly. This is the first book he has written, but he has earned
many journalistic honors, including a National Magazine Award for an article he
wrote about marijuana and the war on drugs. He seems to be very interested in
hot topics in health, and as a journalist, I feel that he has a drive to get to
the truth of an issue no matter what he has to do. This non-fiction book was
originally published in 2001, in New York, New York. The intended audience is
people who are aware and care about the fast food movement and the negative impacts
it’s having on our society and environment.
Schlosser provides vivid details of
the conditions in a typical industrial slaughterhouse. He provides this account
from the firsthand experience of his tour, provided by a worker who was upset
with the working conditions. Hundreds of workers pressed close together,
slicing hunks of meat with sharp knives is what he’s met with when he gets to
the line. When he reaches the beginning of the line a man turns around and
smiles. His face and goggles are splattered with blood and gray matter. The
man’s job is to shoot a steel bolt into each cow’s head, knocking the large
animal unconscious. After watching the “knocker” miss a few cows and have to
shoot two bolts into the animal’s skull, Schlosser mentions he’s seen enough
and goes back outside. Further on in the chapter he provides the disturbing
truth behind how dangerous working in the meatpacking industry is. The
sanitation crew that comes in to clean up the plant at the end of each day has
the most dangerous job. Most workers don’t wear water-resistant clothing while
working with a high-pressure hose that shoots a 180 degree mixture of water and
chlorine, in visibility of about 5 feet, riding moving conveyor belts sometimes
fifteen feet off the ground. A former sanitation worker said, “It’s hot, and
it’s foggy, and you can’t see anything.” Schlosser goes on to mention that
workers are discouraged from seeking medical care, encouraged to do drugs to
keep up with the speed of the line, unions are almost impossible to form, and
that the value of an arm is only $36,000 if you’re willing to wait a few years.
Schlosser provides relevant and
adequate evidence to support his claims against the meatpacking industry. A
firsthand experience is a very reliable source, and he talks to workers in the
area to get the whole story. I am convinced what he is telling in this book is
the truth. He doesn’t acknowledge the opposition much, but I’m satisfied that
the evidence he provides makes the reader bias enough that the opposite side
has no credibility. The main mode of persuasion used in this book is ethos,
with some logos to support his claims. He is effective in tapping in to one’s
moral side, especially by his use of real stories. The cleaning-crew accidents
he gives brief descriptions of are specifically haunting; like this one
“another employee of DCS Sanitation, Salvador Hernandez-Gonzalez, had his head
crushed by a pork-loin processing machine at an IBP plant in Madison, Nebraska.
The same machine had fatally crushed the head of another worker, Ben Barone, a
few years earlier” (Schlosser, pg. 178). This is an example of how he uses
logos and ethos together to compel readers to realize how bad the conditions
for workers are in slaughterhouses.
This is the text that opened my eyes
to just how unethical the conditions of slaughterhouses are for both the
animals and the people that work there. After reading Fast Food Nation I
avoided eating red meat for a few days because every time I looked at it, all I
could picture was the knocker shooting steel bolts into the cow’s skull, or a
man who lost his arm because the person next to him was high on drugs to keep
up with the line. After some time I was able to eat red meat, but now that I’ve
been a vegetarian for a little over a month now, I don’t think I’ll ever be
able to go back to eating factory farmed beef. I think Schlosser might agree
with me that if the animal comes from a ranch where they are grass fed and
slaughtered humanely by workers that are treated well, it is okay to eat red
meat. If you’re on the fence about being a vegetarian, or sticking with it,
read Fast Food Nation, it may help you make the tough decision.
Works Cited
Schlosser,
Eric. Fast Food Nation. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001. Print.
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