Preparing Meat In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

In the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair there were many examples of how meat was processed and packaged in 1904. Throughout the book it becomes obvious that there are many things wrong about how the Browns and Durham company's’ process and package meat. Since it was over a hundred years ago there have been many laws that have changed how we process food, meats particularly. The book describes some disgusting things that occur in the packaging and treating of meats in 1904. There were multiple things that stood out as different in the book. In the book The Jungle there were government overseers. What they did was they surveyed the meat that was already cut and processed and checked for tuberculosis and other diseases. It mentioned that most of the time they did not pay attention to the meats as they passed by. According to the USDA they …show more content…
I think it would be quite disgusting to have someone’s blood on my steak. I definitely think that this would be a major sanitation hazard currently. It is surprising to think that the people preparing meat to be shipped to stores to be bought would not wear any type of protection against the sharp blades of the knives. What is even more surprising is that they kept working without washing their hands even after they cut themselves. It is not only a sanitation hazard to the people consuming the meat, but also the workers because their cut could get infected. The USDA says that it is proper safety and sanitation techniques to keep your hands washed and to keep cuts sealed with a bandage when handling any type of food. You would think that something as simple as washing your hands are putting a bandage on a wound would be common sense even in 1904. The book does state that there were always animals being processed and it seemed to never stop so the workers probably cut themselves and didn’t even