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Summary: This book will open your eyes!
Review: If you're a meat-eater now, you won't be after reading this book. Gail Eisnitz reveals the whole disturbing truth behind the horrifying effects the nation's slaughterhouses have on (nonhuman) animals and people alike. This book will truly open your eyes to not only the suffering other sentient beings are forced to endure, but also to the danger you are putting your life in every time you eat a piece of meat.
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Summary: A MUST read and MUST share book
Review: I found Slaughterhouse a very emotionally difficult book to read, but oh so important. Ms. Eisnitz wrote what needed to be written. Anyone who cares about animals (non-human and human alike) could not read this book and continue to eat animal products. I bought several copies to share with family and friends who continue to 'look the other way' on farm animal suffering. I have actually had people tell me they 'hate' me for sharing this graphic information, but it needs to be shared. I applaud Ms. Eisnitz for her wonderful work. It takes a book like Slaughterhouse to change people's perceptions and eating habits. Thank you Gail.
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Summary: Not optional reading.
Review: Every person who prides him/herself on being educated needs to read this book. It is hard-hitting, beautifully researched, and unfortunately 100% accurate.
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Summary: Slaughterhouse: Who Will Tell the People?
Review: Upton Sinclair, William Grieder, Ida Tarbell move over, your work has not been in vain. Gail Eisnitz steps up to the plate and dares to challenge, confront and expose an American icon--the meat and dairy industry. Though 20 million Americans are full-time vegetarians, millions more, because of poverty, culture, ignorance or misplaced loyalty to American values, consume meat and dairy products which are not just deleterious to their death, but which go to support a behind the closed doors industry which exploits workers and engages in cruelty to animals the likes of which even a seasoned veteran of vegeaterian campaigns would be hard to overlook without feeling sick to the stomach and outraged all at the same time.Ms. Eisnitz has engaged in a one-woman campaign to expose the killing of animals for profit and to alert the American people to the true nature of what resides on their dinner tables and how it got there. The premise of the work weaves a common thread. No matter where the author visited--John Morrell , Perdue, Smithfield, no matter to whom she spoke, the answer was always the same. Animals are not killed before they are exposed to the horrors of factory farming and the USDA, the federal agency charged with the welfare of animals, is not enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act and fires USDA inspectors and vets who do!! As one worker reported, "The worse thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in that stick pit for any period of time, you develop an attitude that lets you kill things, but doesn't let you care." Anecdotal, insolated incidents, alarmist, biased. These are descriptive terms that the government, if they respond at all, would use to describe the author's work. Yet, the reality, the documentation, the vivid and horrific tales of workers describing injuries to themselves, their fellow workers and the cruelty to the workers cannot be ignored or marginalized. How is the story of "Slaughterhouse" regareded by the corporate media? The author minces no words in outlining the reactions of the usual suspects to her tale of worker injury, animal cruelty and government corruption, indifference and the tissue of lies that passes for truth. "60 minutes," "Prime Time Live," and "20/20" all dutifully ignored her story deeming it too graphic to show the American people. What of the effect of such practices on the American people? Filfth, rats, roaches, grease, oil, mutilation are all a part of the world of the Slaughterhouse, having changed little since the days of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Eisnitz, having stripped her story of the trials and tribulations of one family, lays bares the naked truth of life inside the closed doors of an American institution--the slaughterhouse. It is a tough read, a gut-wrenching, stomach-churning, nausea causing, necessary, compelling and important book not be ignored or easily set aside. Like the Auschwitzs and Dachaus of the Nazi era, these American concentration camps dot the rural countryside providing employment for the poorest of the poor upon, as Mark Twain once wrote, the wealthy step to power. Ignore this book at your peril, when you read it take it to heart for it is the truth.
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Summary: Holy Cow!!! And You're STILL Eating this Bull??
Review: Listen people, I'm no bleeding heart tree-hugger. What I am is an educated citizen who simply can't tolerate deplorable disregard for global ecology and safe production of people's food. Slaughterhouse is one of many books I have read in the past 5 years on the dangers of mass-production scaled animal "farming". As a biologist faced with increasingly alarming info from multiple sources (including scientific journals) I have been forced to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. Today I joined the Humane Farming Association. I feel it is my duty to tell everyone I care about what I have learned. Read this book and you will begin to understand what I am talking about. If the Salmonella or E.coli bacteria don't get you, then the spongiform encephalopathy or heart attack just might.
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Summary: A powerfull, gripping book that will change your life
Review: If you are against torture, if you are against the maiming of workers, if you are against sickening and deadly products being sold to you as "USDA Inspected", then read this book. Gail Eisnitz is a lone voice of sanity and compassion in a meat industry allowed to run rampant with corruption, complacency, and carelessnes. You'll never be the same.
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Summary: A must-read.
Review: Superb! Eisnitz is a great investigative reporter. Her book is both meticulously researched and a gripping read. She presents a damning indictment of the US meat industry. The industry's practices include truly shocking treatment of the animals, abuse of workers, and disregard for basic hygiene. (Fecal matter, pus, and insect larvae routinely contaminate the meat, thanks to the industry's obsession with cost-cutting. Hence the recent outbreaks of meat-related food poisoning.) She also explains why the USDA, which is supposed to enforce the Humane Slaughter Act AND protect us from contaminated meat, has done so poorly over the last two decades.
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Summary: Can't put down this expose of US Dept of Atrocities (USDA).
Review: This is a "must read book," in part because it is so readable. Order it for your book club! The tale is not pretty: how the very departments meant to protect workers and the public (forget protecting the animals) are in cahoots with the large packing houses to provide Americans with unsanitary meat. American meat is so unsanitary that the European Community (EC) wanted to prohibit it from import for health reasons. Yuck. For those concerned about workers, a well written tale of worker brutalization. For those concerned about animals, this puts a lie to all those philosophers who would argue "well, wouldn't it be alright to eat meat if the animals were killed painlessly?" as they chomp their beef.
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Summary: This is a must read for the meat-eaters of this country
Review: This is a well written unemotional account of conditions and atrocities happening at several, if not all, slaughterhouses. Since USDA seems unable to conduct surprise inspections, one must assume that USDA is in cahoots with the meat industry, surprise surprise. The filthy conditions and working environment in the chicken slaughterhouse is unbelievable, but the information came from so many different sources I DO believe it. I was not a meat eater before reading this book, now I have earmarked pages to show to carnivorous friends when they come to my house. The filthy conditions alone are enough to turn anybody off eating meat, but add to that the incredible cruelty to the animals, specially those described at the hog slaughterhouse, makes one believe the workers at the plants have absolutely no feelings at all. This is so shameful and slaughterhouses should be investigated by somebody other than the USDA.
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Summary: This Book Will Change Your Life
Review: In the midst of our high-tech, ostentatious, hedonistic lifestyle, among the dazzling monuments to history, art, religion, and commerce, are the 'black boxes' -- faceless compounds where society conducts its dirty business of abusing and killing innocent, feeling beings. Among these are biomedical research laboratories, factory farms, and slaughterhouses. These are our Dachaus, our Buchenwalds, our Birkenaus. Like the good German burgers, 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 efficient 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 unspeakable terror and agony. And, yes, the book may well change your life. It starts when the animals are hauled 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 s**t 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." And here is what awaits the animals on the kill floor, according to the testimony of a horse slaughterhouse worker: "You move so fast you don't have time to wait till a horse bleeds out. You skin him as he bleeds. Sometimes a horse's nose is down in the blood, blowing bubbles, and he suffocates." Cows don't fare any better: "A lot of times the skinner finds a cow is still conscious when he slices the side of its head and it starts kicking wildly. If that happens, ... the skinner shoves a knife into the back of its head to cut the spinal cord." (This paralyzes the animal, but doesn't stop the pain of being skinned alive.) Here is an account of calf slaughter: "To get done with them faster, we'd put eight or nine of them in the knocking box at a time... You start shooting, the calves are jumping, they're all piling up on top of each other. You don't know which ones got shot and which didn't... They're hung anyway, and down the line they go, wriggling and yelling"(to be slaughtered while fully conscious). And another of pig slaughter: "If the hog is conscious, ... it takes a long time for him to bleed out. These hogs get up to the scalding tank, hit the water, and start kicking and screaming... There's a rotating arm that pushes them under. No chance for them to get out. I am not sure if they burn to death before they drown, but it takes them a couple of minutes to stop thrashing." The brutal work takes a major emotional toll on the workers: "I've taken out my job pressure and frustration on the animals, on my wife, ... and on myself, with heavy drinki! ng." Then it gets much worse: "... with an animal who pisses you off, you don't just kill it. You ... blow the windpipe, make it drown in its own blood, split its nose... I would cut its eye out... and this hog would just scream. One time I ... sliced off the end of a hog's nose. The hog went crazy, so I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts..." Safety is a major problem for workers who operate sharp instruments standing on a floor slippery with blood and gore, surrounded by conscious animals kicking for their lives, and pressed by a speeding slaughter line. Indeed, 36 percent incur serious injuries, making their work the most hazardous in America. Workers who are disabled and those who complain about working conditions are fired and frequently replaced by undocumented aliens. A few years ago, 25 workers were burned to death in a chicken slaughterhouse fire in Hamlet, NC, because management had locked the safety doors to prevent theft. Here is an eyewitness account: "The conditions are very dangerous, and workers aren't well trained for the machinery. One machine has a whirring blade that catches people in it. Workers lose fingers. One woman's breast got caught in it and was torn off. Another's shirt got caught and her face was dragged into it." Although Slaughterhouse focuses on animal cruelty and worker safety, it also addresses the issues of consumer health, including the failure of the federal inspection system. There is a poignant testimony from the mother of a child who ate a hamburger contaminated with E. coli: "After Brianne's second emergency surgery, surgeons left her open from her sternum to her pubic area to allow her swollen organs room to expand and prevent them from ripping her skin... Her heart ... bled from every pore. The toxins shut down Brianne's liver and pancreas. An insulin pump was started. Several times her skin turned black for weeks. She had a brain swell that the neurologists could not treat... They told ! us that Brianne was essentially brain-dead." Slaughterhouse has some problems. In maintaining the suspense of a storyline, the presentation suffers from some choppiness and redundancy. However, the book's major problem is not the author's presentation, but the publisher's cover design. The title and the headless carcasses on the dust jacket will effectively prevent the shocking testimony inside from reaching a vast audience. And that's a pity. Because the wretched animals whose agony the book documents so graphically deserve to have their story told. And because Slaughterhouse is the most powerful argument for meatless eating that I have ever read. Eisnitz' closing comment "Now you know, and you can help end these atrocities" should be fair warning. After nearly 25 years of work on farm animal issues, including leading slaughterhouse demonstrations, I was deeply affected. Reading Slaughterhouse has changed my life. I will spend the rest of this year making sure that this testimony gets out.
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