Meat packing industry

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The meat packing industry is an industry that handles the slaughtering, processing and distribution of animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock.

The industry is primarily focused on producing meat for human consumption, but it also yields a variety of by-products including hides, feathers, dried blood, and through the process of rendering, fat such as tallow and protein meals such as meat & bone meal.

In the U.S. and some other countries the place where the meat packing is done is called a meat packing plant; in New Zealand, where most of the produce is exported, it is called a freezing works. An abattoir is a place where animals are slaughtered for food.

[edit] Labor relations

Because no two animals are the same, the meat packing industry has not been able to automate to the same extent that some other food processors have and remains very labor-intensive. If the meat is to be processed in as cost-effective a manner as possible, labor costs must be minimized by paying the lowest wages possible and maximizing productivity from the workforce. This combined with the nature of the work makes conditions intolerable to many people. In many plants, fewer than one out of ten recruits remains beyond the probationary period. ^{[citation needed]}

For this reason, many meat packing plants in the developed world are unionized while those that are not are often prime targets for labor organizers. Relations between management and organized labor in meat packing plants can be strained at the best of times. Strikes and lockouts are fairly common occurrences in the meat packing industry. Because much of the work is relatively unskilled, it is possible to bring in replacement workers so long as such a workforce is available and the laws of the jurisdiction in question allow replacements to be hired. If management does attempt this route, the possibility for violence on the picket line can be great.

The United States meat packing industry held a prominent focus in the 1906 novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which criticized the treatment of workers and the safety of the products themselves. A more modern exposé with a view of the current meat packing industry is Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser and Slaughterhouse by Gail A. Eisnitz.