Rating: 
Summary: Corruption and cruelty of factory slaughterhouses exposed
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing, and eye-opening book
Review: You really have a choice after reading this book - and that choice is to pretend you didn't read it and go on eating meat, or to become conscious of what meat really is, how it is "processed", and when and why you are consuming it. I found this book very difficult to read and had to read it chapter by chapter over the period of a month, as it is depressing to realize what we are doing to procure a bacon cheeseburger, and how we must neccessarily close our eyes to the process of killing the animals we eat. My 15-month old daughter is a vegetarian as a result of my reading this disturbing book, and the rest of the family is being weaned off of meat gradually.
Rating:
Summary: Shocking and Disturbing
Review: I found this book extremely disturbing. How anyone can read this book and continue to eat meat is beyond me. Don't even bother to read the review from "a reader in Sterling Colorado". His father was a "professional slaughterer and butcher for 28 years"? Hardly something to be proud of.
Rating: 
Summary: Shocking but Not Accurate
Review: This book was fairly well researched, but then again how reliable is the testimony of the people that she used? Granted, there are times that the employees are mistreated at the time of stunning, but that's few and far between. Slaughtering of Red meat livestock has never been a pretty sight, i will say(since my father was a professional slaughterer and butcher for 28 years), but generally the treatment of the animals is godd. Once again, take into consideration this is an animal rights activist writing this book, so she's lacking some well founded research from the top meat and livestock science departments in the United States. Please take this book with a grain o' salt!
Rating:
Summary: Shh, No One's Supposed to Know
Review: Since the days of Upton Sinclair the name of the game in the meatpacking industry has been profit through volume. During the New Deal unionized workers won gains in areas such as wages, hours,and in working conditions. Men like Frank Ellis fought to hold back unreasonable demands of greedy management. Left unchecked, the meatpacking industry has never had a glowing record, either with working conditions, or sanitary conditions. Over several decades a new generation of writers including; James R Barrett, Carol Andreas,and Deborah Fink a have tried to awaken America to the dangers meatpacking plants posed to workers and communities. Now the reporting of Gail Eisnitz is added to the list. In Slaughterhouse our consummers, our animals, and our workers cry out for justice. Sinclair would be proud of Eisnitz,as she has written a book that aims at both the heart and the stomach. This book is a must read. I was unable to put it down! As a historian however, I regret that Ms. Eisnitz has not included a bibliography.
Rating:
Summary: BURGERS DON'T GROW ON TREES
Review: Mcdonald's once had a hamburger tree as one of their kiddy gimmicks. Read this book and you'll understand where meat really comes from. The facts in this book are more powerful than a thousand animal rights protests. READ IT. Then buy John Robbins books and read them. Then save your live and thousands of others by making a positive change.
Rating:
Summary: A descent into a real-life hell ....
Review: I have not been as moved, or as shocked, by man's inhumanity to man and his fellow sentient creatures since I saw the newsreel footage of hundreds of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves at the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau on the BBC's "The World At War". An utterly shocking, meticulously researched and superbly written expose of the US meat industry and a book that should be read by every person on the planet. Our future as a species, in truth our very souls are at stake.
Rating:
Summary: Truly courageous journalism - this book is a necessity
Review: Put simply, you'll never look at meat the same way after reading this disturbing, though superb, book. With impeccable reseach and excellent, insightful writing, Ms.Eisnitz lays bare the unthinkable cruelty, greed and corruption behind one of the strongest and most influential of political voices - the American meat industry. Think your Congressman or your local farmers are going to share this kind of information with you? Think again. Cheers to Gail Eisnitz for having the courage to take on and expose this "Goliath!"
Rating:
Summary: It's not that simple.
Review: I give the book a couple of stars because I believe that free speech no matter how misguided allow better debate in a free society. Ms. Eisnitz research does turn up the bad in the food industry with regard to meat production, processing and distribution, however; she paints the whole industry with the taint of the worst offenders. Also, she either has not studied the worst examples of fruit and vegetable production, processing and distribution or she would, under the same premise inferred from this book, recommend we don't eat anything. I grew up on a family farm and still have close ties to many who farm for a living even though I don't. This book is a disservice to those true animal and human ethicists who make the food on our tables possible, whether our tastes or beliefs allow meat to be an item of that feast or not.
Rating:
Summary: A real eye-opener
Review: I'm a college student who had the privledge of being able to see the Gail Eisnitz speak at my university. Her lecture was amazing. You have no idea what happens to your meat before you eat it. Strongly recommend this true-life detective story.
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