The Jungle reveals the evolution of the meatpacking business

The Covid-19 outbreaks tested the character of Canada’s meat plants – and they passed

By Sheri Monk

Discovering a new passion is a lot like falling in love for the first time. In the beginning, you just cannot get enough of it, and you wonder what you ever thought about before.

And so it was for me when I began reporting on the cattle business – I was insatiable. I happily discovered the discount shelves at bookstores were full of information on food production. While it was a boon for me, I mourned that agriculture was an unpopular topic right alongside the bargain books on politics and history.

What I read chronicled the loss of the family farm, corporate agriculture, the disappearance of the honeybee, GMOs, BSE, and the history of branding. I was so taken with the latter, I actually had my own newly Saskatchewan-registered brand turned into a tattoo. (On me, not on a cow.)

Despite that period of infatuation, it wasn’t until several years later that I read Upton Sinclair’s classic book, The Jungle. Written in 1906 after the author worked and lived in Chicago’s infamous Packingtown, the book had a profound impact on the American meat-packing industry. If you’re in the livestock business, and this title isn’t on your bookshelf yet, it needs to be.

Sinclair used the industrial climate of Packingtown to detail the tribulations of immigrants desperate to claim the American Dream. He wrote about how they were often swindled by predatory lenders and taken advantage of by corrupt supervisors, about how their children worked in sweatshops, and how women were abused sexually at work. Many would suffer the rest of their days striving to escape a poverty worse than they had left behind in the Old World.

However, when the controversial book was released, the American people paid little mind to the horror experienced by the immigrants – instead they were concerned only with the allegations of widespread and systematic food safety issues. Poor Sinclair was devastated. While the book was well read and people were outraged, it failed to achieve the effect he desired. “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” he later said.

Still, The Jungle irrevocably changed and influenced the beef industry, not only in the U.S., but also in Canada. It included stories of rats and fecal matter being ground into sausage, spoiled meats being soaked in chemicals to remove the smell, tubercular beef exiting packer doors as though the disease were just a special spice, and of the occasional sorry worker who fell into the rendering tanks and was cremated into lard.

Teddy Roosevelt was president at the time, and although he considered Sinclair a left-wing lunatic, the public outcry prompted him to send two men to investigate the situation. Packingtown was tipped off and staff cleaned the plants day and night for three weeks straight. Despite their efforts, the only claim that couldn’t be substantiated was that men occasionally disappeared into vats to spend their afterlife as lard.

Public pressure resulted in the formation of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, as well as the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1930 (out of which today’s Food and Drug Administration was born). Interestingly, Sinclair didn’t endorse the legislation because American taxpayers, not the packers, would bear the substantive inspection fees under the act. In Canada, packers pay for inspection, and this difference is cited as one of the factors creating the uneven ground between the Canadian and American beef business.

There is no doubt this book written as part of a socialist agenda, in its time. (Take the word “socialist” with a grain of salt – keeping in mind the American setting.) Near the end, there’s a rant nearly as long and academic as John Galt’s in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, although the two are, of course, diametrically opposed.

Years after The Jungle was published, a report revealed widespread collusion between the big five U.S. packers, culminating in the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. Near the end of the book, Sinclair imagines (through his characters) a much more equitable world 100 years in the future – precisely the time the housing bubble was poised to pop in the U.S., after deregulation allowed the “too big to fail” banks to destabilize the global economy. After all, everything old trickles down to become new again.

The book pits capitalism against socialism, and is written with the absolute black-and-white view that only rabid political partisanship can create. Sinclair saw the book as a story about immigrants and the lack of compassion and resources for the lower class. America saw the book as a lesson in food safety. After observing the meatpacking sector’s response to Covid-19, I see it the necessary catalyst in the evolution of a kinder, gentler industry.

I interviewed workers from the plants about the outbreaks, and even though I was keeping their identities confidential, they had nothing but good things to say – even reporting collaboration and co-operation between the plants. Workers felt supported by their employers, they felt safe coming back to work once the plants re-opened, and they were as committed to the beef industry as any cowboy I’ve ever met.
Perhaps Mr. Sinclair hit his target after all.

Sheri is a journalist based in Alberta specializing in agriculture, science and natural history. sherimonk@gmail.com