Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside Th U.S. Meat Industry [Hardcover]

Gail A. Eisnitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

With powerful descriptions reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's masterpiece The Jungle, this book takes a shocking, frightening look at where our beef, poultry, and pork are "mass-produced." Photos.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gail A. Eisnitz (San Rafael, CA), winner of the Albert Schweitzer Medal for outstanding achievement in animal welfare, is the chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association. Her work has resulted in exposés by ABC’s Good Morning America, PrimeTime Live, and Dateline NBC, and her interviews have been heard on more than 1,000 radio stations. Her work has been featured in such newspapers as The New York Times, Miami Herald, Detroit Free Press, Texas Monthly, Denver Business Journal, Los Angeles Times, and US News & World Report. Eisnitz was the driving force behind a front-page exposé in The Washington Post documenting slaughterhouse atrocities. The Washington Post reporter later described Eisnitz as "the most courageous investigator I’ve ever seen." The story was one of the highest reader-response pieces ever run by The Washington Post. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 325 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573921661
• ISBN-13: 978-1573921664
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (129 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Animal Rights

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

291 of 297 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its not about cruelty or even safety, its about PROFIT, August 18, 2004

By 

Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside Th U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)

This book is for everyone to read, not just animal activists or vegetarians. This is a book about corporate greed and government ineffectiveness, and how absolutely everyone in the room refuses to see the Pink Elephant at the table, stuffing itself at the expense of your health and hard earned money.

Pay Attention! Virtually every piece of meat you purchase from your supermarket with the "USDA Inspected" safety stamp on it HAS NEVER BEEN INSPECTED AT ALL. USDA inspectors are no longer responsible for "Contamination Control", which amounts to debris coating the carcass such as feces, urine, mucus, pus, hair, dirt, grease, rat droppings, blood clots, etc. Their only responsibility is to examine the organs and head for gross malformations, and the inspectors are severely reprimanded or even fired for stopping the line, so virtually every filthy and disease ridden corpse makes its way to your table anyway.

A) Taking the butchering of animals away from the smaller, pride-of-ownership slaughterhouses and moving virtually all of the animal product production to high-speed, high profit corporations was a deadly move, and it is up to the working-class people to stop it.

B) The US is the only industrialized country that cools their chicken carcasses in water instead of air cooling, creating a virtual disease pool filthier than a public toilet next to a crack house. Why? Because water adds weight, so you get the privilege of actually paying increased poundage for the putrid and infected water your chicken soaked in.

C) Going against the National Academy of Science recommendations, the USDA relaxed standards and cut back on inspections while allowing production to increase over 40%. The question is no longer "IF" there is fecal matter on your meat, but "HOW MUCH IS ACCEPTABLE". Feces has been reclassified from a "Dangerous Contaminant" to a "Cosmetic Blemish". So has hair, mucus, dirt, droppings, etc.

D) With greed and profit being the only driving force behind the industry now, they have tried to pass the buck to you, the consumer, by telling you that the process of decontamination is up to YOU; i.e. cook your meat before you eat it. When did the decontamination issue switch from containment BEFORE occurring to recovery AFTER they allowed the feces to literally pass under their noses?

E) Working conditions in these Flesh Factories are deplorable, with chances of injury or illness six times greater than working in a coalmine. Workers cannot leave the floor to take a bathroom break, and often urinate into the blood trench or on themselves. If a worker removes a carcass as "condemned", the Supervisors at the plant often put it back into production and reprimand the worker.

F) Slaughterhouses take advantage of immigrant labor, knowing they are too poverty stricken or scared to protest their working conditions. The USDA Veterinarians who oversee the Plant's Inspection Line are mostly Foreigners, who fear for their jobs more than American workers.

G) Animals go through the Kill Line ALIVE all the time, it is so common that slaughterhouse workers do not even see it as an infraction any longer, they are more worried for their own safety from dropped carcasses, flying hooves, slashing knives, faulty equipment, and inhumanely high speed Lines.

So, are you scared yet? I simply skimmed the surface of this book, and if you are not already terrified by these seven points, you should be.

This isn't just about animal cruelty, or poor working conditions; its about the unfathomable corporate greed that we the people have let our Politicians slip past us, where only a few come out ahead and millions of others will suffer. From the mistreated workers and their families, to taxpayers whose hard earned dollars are now paying for a toothless agency (USDA), all the way down to the victims of the tainted food passed down to us by an industry no longer accountable for its own greed.

Ms. Eisnitz has sworn affidavits from people all across the industry, from plant workers and plant supervisors, USDA Inspectors and USDA Veterinarians, even a letter from the (then) Secretary of Agriculture Edward Madigan (who not only denied any wrongdoing in a letter, but also unwittingly documented that the USDA was breaking the law) stating that inspectors were not allowed near the line.

She took her entire caseload of documented proof of the industry's greed, neglect, and cruelty to the shows 20/20, 60 Minutes, and other prime time media, but was told that her story was "Too Graphic" for the public-at-large to handle.

Too Graphic? We see war, murder, rape, incest, child abuse and more just on the 30 minute segment of news, and the media felt this would be "too graphic" for you, the consumer, to handle. I found this horribly pompous of them, and have since written a letter to both shows.

The only thing I didn't like about the book was its lack of a reference listing; web sources and whatnot. But Eisnitz does name names, and references the Human Farming Association if you want further information. Overall, I highly recommend this book, but don't read it before dinner. Enjoy!!

220 of 224 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Corruption and cruelty of factory slaughterhouses exposed, June 7, 2000

By 

"blackhorseranch" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside Th U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)

Ms. Eisnitz is frank and candid in her exposure of the uglier side of factory farming. Slaughter of live animals is never pretty, but in many of the USDA supervised plants, the conditions are unbelievably cruel and digustingly filthy. The workers are exploited, placed in harm's way, and are treated little better than the animals they have to process. The animals themselves meet terribly slow deaths when stun bolts fail and stick pit knives don't cut deep enough to allow them to bleed to death before skinning and gutting. And if the cruelty isn't enough to grab you, wait until you read about the offal blocked drains that flood slaughterhouse floors with blood and fecal material. Wait until you read about manure being classified as a "cosmetic defect" that can simply be rinsed off and the meat passed off as USDA select to an unsuspecting public. This book will turn your stomach and make you angry.

You have probably already read many of the reviews and a majority of them come from vegans and vegetarians. Well, I'm not one of them. I raise meat animals and I eat meat. This book is important to me because I believe that Americans have a right to eat meat and not worry about it killing them with E. coli or Clostridia infections. I believe Americans should be able to believe that the USDA seal means the meat is safe and was killed in a humane fashion. Right now the American meat eating public is being betrayed by the USDA and "Slaughterhouse" details this with painstaking research and first-hand accounts.

"Slaughterhouse" is graphic and readers should expect it to be disturbing. But it is also very, very accurate. I've toured several slaughterhouses myself and found conditions similar to what Ms. Eisnitz has described. The USDA needs to step up enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act, they need to POLICE the industry they oversee, not just sit idly by.

In short, this book might not make you a vegetarian, but it WILL make you an activist.

107 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignorant no more, August 2, 2005

By 

J. Marone - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment Inside Th U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)

The format was easy to read, short concise stories, but the material was hard to stomach. Gail is a wonderful author and has brought to light all sides of the meat industry. Including the impact to the animals, children, workers, inspectors and vets. It shows that there is no one guilty party, there is a guilty industry in need of radical change, and an uninformed public - (one that in my limited experience would rather stay blind to these issues).

On a personal note, I never understood what my decision to eat meat meant for the meat I was eating. I could never have comprehended how horrible their deaths are, I was already aware their lives were not pleasant, but I was not prepared for the suffering that awaits them after a life of strife. Cows, pigs and chickens are taken through the slaughter house alive. Cow's are often alive all the way through the line, this includes while they are getting their legs chopped off with cutters - imagine that... They do not stop the line for these inconveniences. The workers shove electric prods in their rectums and eyes - deep into the sockets occasionally pulling out the eye to get them moving to the slaughter line.

After reading this I will never eat another piece of meat again. It is not my decision to make any other living thing suffer. But I find it amazing that when you go to share this book, people don't want to know. They would rather stay ignorant and that in itself has shocked me tremendously.