Review of Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America By Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway

Authors

Kendall Thu, Northern Illinois University

Date of this Version

Fall 2004

Comments

Published in Great Plains Research Vol. 14, No. 2, 2004. Copyright © 2004 The Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Used by permission.

Abstract

Stull and Broadway capture fifteen years' experience examining structural shifts and community consequences of an increasingly industrialized meat production system in North America, with particular attention to the meatpacking sector. Their impressive, wide-ranging coverage of changing beef, poultry, and pork production systems and their influence on rural cultures will no doubt be a staple resource for scholars, policy makers, and communities in the Great Plains and elsewhere grappling with dramatic changes in our nation's food system.
An initial chapter aptly outlines the contours of agricultural industrialization, followed by a chapter each devoted specifically to the three major meat sectors. The following two chapters detail the changing inner workings of the meatpacking sector, noting that despite significant technological transformations, the labor, class, and safety problems documented by Upton Sinclair a century earlier remain remarkably unchanged.