Rating: 
Summary: Stomache churning expose
Review: _Slaughterhouse_ is a comprehensive and highly readable expose of how the modern meat industry needlessly tortures animals and endangers both workers and consumers. As a cruelty investigator for an animal welfare organization, Eisnitz began her exploration of slaughterhouse conditions after getting a tip from a USDA inspector that cows were being skinned while alive and conscious at the plant where he worked. The many slaughterhouse and USDA informants Eisnitz interviews all describe similar acts of cruelty and neglect for safety that occur daily in modern slaughterhouses. Eisnitz reveals that the Humane Slaughter Act is at base a dead letter law in the modern industry and that USDA safety inspections are not much better off. Ever wondered why you could order medium-rare meat in a restaurant 20 years ago, but today many restaraunts refuse to cook it that way? It's not just because people are more willing to sue today--deregulation makes your meat dirtier, and Eisnitz tells you how in disgusting detail. She talks to slaughter workers who have been chewed up and spit out by their employers--physically injured and often psychologically damaged by the stress of working an inherently unsavory job at an inhuman pace. Finally, her descriptions of what happens to animals in this environment makes a lie out of any notion that the meat we eat is killed "humanely." The issues Eisnitz brings up should make any compassionate person stop and think. My main criticism is that she doesn't provide any activism tips or resources for interested readers. Overall though, a very compelling and important book.
Rating: 
Summary: Its not about cruelty or even safety, its about PROFIT
Review: 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!!
Rating:
Summary: All To Real
Review: In 1989, Gail Eisnitz recieved a letter from Timothy Walker, a well known whistleblower. His letter stated that he has first hand knowledge that a slaughterhouse (Kaplan Industries) was skinning live cattle. At first, she didn't know what to believe so she called the USDA. A USDA inspector called her back with the findings: no cattle were being skinned alive at Kaplan.
She decides to contact Walker by phone. When asked how he knew that Kaplan was skinning live cows, he stated that he was a USDA employee. He begins to tell Eisnitz a few more details.
In the US alone, over one hundred and one million pigs are slaughtered each year. Thirty seven million cattle and calves, more than four million horses, goats and sheep and over eight BILLION chickens and turkeys are killed.Millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria and tumors are shipped for sale to customers. At a Perdue plant, there is so much fecal contamination on the floor from chickens that it leaked into a workers boots and burned his feet so badly that his toenails had to be amputated. The company won't even allow workers to leave the line to go to the bathroom so they relieve themselves on the floor. Sometimes the chickens that are hung, fall to the floor that is covered with roaches, feces and blood. The chickens that fall aren't even washed off before being hung back up on the line. One worked said that he "saw flies on the chicken as it went down the line and maggots in boxes which contained bags that the chickens would be wrapped in." Occasionally, maggots were ground up with everything else and remained in the final product. This is disturbing, and it should be. I hope that those who read this book will do something. Write to your senator or member of parliament, stop eating meat or even distribute this book among friends. Just do something. These are animals. They feel pain just like you do. Would you allow this to happen to a dog or cat? They why allow it to happen to farm animals.
This is a book that everyone needs to read. A lot of people believe or like to believe that their dinner arrived on their plate humanely. People need to know about wrongdoings like this. It's inhumane and it's wrong, plain and simple.
Rating: 
Summary: Literally - clean your plate!
Review: Ms.Eisnitz has convinved me that the principals that drive successful businesses are at work in our food supply to nefarious ends. While driving down costs and improving productivity may be laudable in the production of wigets, in the killing and "cleaning" of our meats, these ends are set to produce an epidemic of deadly pathogens and diseased foods. The recent mad cow scare has hopefully produced the publicity this book and others of its ilk have long sought. The USDA has proven to be impotent and having cattlemen assoc. leaders overseeing production is insanity.A very insightful read.
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