Cut To The Bone Analysis

Cut To The Bone, by Michael Grabell is an interesting piece centered around the idea that big business takes advantage of the common man. In this case, Case Farms taking advantage of illegal immigrants. The context behind this piece is so much deeper too stretching back decades to really understand why these immigrants are coming here. This article invokes several questions such as does the immigration system need to be reformed? How did we get here, both with the industry and with the immigrants? Why are these workers being mistreated like this? Should workers rights be protected even if they are undocumented? And why are some laws being so weakly enforced? I believe this article brings up parallels with different time periods which we thought we had moved past in the United States. This passage invokes readers to feel angry that these businesses can do these things, sad about what these workers are going through, and disappointed in the government for letting this happen. An important piece of information about this piece is to understand how these immigrants …show more content…
Case Farms was founded in 1986 by Tom Shelton when he “bought a family-owned operation called Case Egg & Poultry” (Cut To The Bone, Michael Grabell). Today, the company owns four plants. With the growing demand for chicken, Shelton realized the plants needed to become more automated, and needed more labor.
Originally hiring the Amish to work the factories, the Amish quit because the work became too demanding. Thern they turned to Latin American Immigrants. Many of these immigrants “found the conditions intolerable” (Michael Grabell) and they also quickly left. Case Farms found itself a worker problem but soon found a solution. Refugees from the Guatemalan Civil War were fleeing the country by the thousands from the danger. Case Farms jumped on the opportunity to hire these undocumented individuals, many of which are