Tag Archives: The Jungle

02/28/11

Don’t “hog” up the line!

In a time where demands of cheap and avaible meat far exceeds what the local butcher could put out, slaughterhouses have become the only option. Eating meat is a part of daily life, and people barely wonder where it came from before it was sold off on the shelter of supermarkets with their nicely wrapped packages.

It wasn’t until 1906, when the novel “The Jungle” was published that people began to question and become aware of what actually happens behind the scenes. Due to the public outcray cause by the book, the government immediately took action and form the Food and Drug Administration also known as the FDA.

In the photo above, Ford’s perfection in the assembly line was efficiently adopted to “eliminate loss of time between each operation and the next, and to reduce the energy expended by the worker on the manipulation of heavy carcasse.”

02/26/11

Tarzan goes organic

In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, which originated as undercover work for a magazine. He described the conditions of meat factories in Chicago, as well as the poverty of workers, their living conditions, lack of social programs and more. Initially, President Theodore Roosevelt  believe Sinclair a “crackpot.” However, after sending his trusted employees he still didn’t want to regulate the industry. Due to public pressure, the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed, leading to the founding of the Food and Drug Administration. These actions paved the way for federal inspection of consumer products and expanded the responsibilities and power of the federal government.