Dissertation 2017

To what extent can fiction and non-fiction literature highlight how America’s meat industry upholds the capitalist ethic of unrestrained competition, whereby the relentless drive for capital ensures that women, workers, animals, and consumers are rendered absent in physicality and corporate thought.

Rhiannon Croker

Abstract

Utilitarian philosopher, Peter Singer, famously said: ‘industrial farming is responsible for more pain and misery than all the wars of history put together’.  My dissertation addresses the question of how, when reading non-fiction and fiction literature simultaneously, we can come to acknowledge that when one participates in the act of eating meat within America’s modern, consumer culture, there is always an absence, an act of violence, and something to be alienated from. I argue that there is an interdependent relationship between suffering and the meat industry, of which Singer summarises accurately. In a cannibalistic capitalist society, I believe that the ability to consume at one’s will, is the ultimate sign of power. Yet, to successfully sustain the capitalist ideology, agribusinesses and other large corporations rely on the compliant silence of those who are buried out of sight and memory within the factory farm system. My dissertation discusses this capitalist ethic with regards to The Communist Manifesto. By applying the analytical concepts disclosed by Marx and Engles to contemporary agricultural practices, I am able to argue how, in a hierarchical society, secondary citizens become tools in the means of production and the acquisition of capital. This dissertation looks closely at the various groups of human beings who, like animals, are rendered absent. Therefore, I seek to argue that within our present meat-eating climate, humans no longer fulfil the criteria to be considered a political animal and thus superior to animals. If humans by nature are considered political in that they possess the power to morally reason, then how, when all natural behaviour and feelings are taken away, can anyone preserve this status?

Word Count: 10,999.

Table of Contents

1. Photograph of a KFC billboard (World Heritage Site)                            3                                                      

2. Introduction                                                                                               4

3. Main body of discussion

Chapter 1                                                                                                       10

Chapter 2                                                                                                   22

Chapter 3                                                                                                      35

                                                                                                 

4. Conclusion                                                                                                    47

5. Bibliography                                                                                                 50

Photograph (above): Taken by Rhiannon Croker at The Tomb of the Kings, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Paphos, Cyprus. July 2016.

Introduction

          This dissertation will discuss three fundamental issues that, under certain societal and political laws, circulate the meat industry in America. I will explore the prevalence of these issues within two primary fiction novels: The Jungle  by Upton Sinclair (1906), and My Year of Meats  by Ruth Ozeki (1998). With regards to these two texts, I will employ contemporary arguments and facts collated by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation  (2001), and Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals  (2009). However, the first chapter will hold a primary focus on Carol Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990),  which upholds a feminist-vegetarian critique of the relationship between meat and men and the subsequent oppression of women. The second chapter will explore animals and animality, how both worker and animal are divided in a hierarchical arrangement, whereby both are reduced to meat and machines at the hands of male dominated agribusinesses. Finally, the third chapter will explore the adulteration of meat, and the tiered power relations that reveal how agribusinesses prioritise profit over consumer health. 

          Throughout my dissertation, I will use the term agribusiness for the reason that it denotes how the agricultural collective has been transformed into a business fixated on commercial principles. The term was not coined until the mid-20th century, however Sinclair’s story focuses on Brown’s meat packing plant and Durham’s fertilizer plant who carry out procedures in a strictly business-like manner. Therefore, Sinclair foreknowingly displayed the prototype of an agri-business before it became an established, conscious alliance.  

          The aim of this dissertation is essentially to challenge hierarchical and oppositional modes of thinking where women, workers and consumers are rendered categorically marginal or even invisible. With this in mind, I will display how two novels, published almost a decade apart, expose and warn us of domestic and industrial oppression, and where corporate and media manipulation prospers within the very foundations of America’s meat industry. Within the afterword of The Jungle, Dr. Barry Sears insists that ‘American’s are more concerned about their stomachs than their hearts’,  due to the novel’s reception being obsessed with tainted meat rather than worker’s plight. This assertion resounds within Ozeki’s later novel as issues regarding hormones used within the industry overshadow issues regarding patriarchy and oppression, as it concludes with Jane selling a documentary to media outlets revealing how the feedlot in question uses the illegal drug DES. Therefore, I decided to structure my dissertation in irony of this by concluding with chapter three having a primary focus on adulterated meat. Through this, the first and second chapters alongside workers, women and animals, are overlooked and the reader is left feeling more concerned about food safety than that of their fellow human and non-human beings. 

        America’s meat industry possesses many traits of the capitalist system that Marx and Engles sought to criticise within their Communist Manifesto. It thus acts as the ultimate metonym for overproduction, globalisation, the mechanization of the work place, and a relentless rendering of humans to automatons, whereby ‘men function like beasts’.  Therefore, I decided to explore animal theory and the ways in which reason, sentience, and rationality affect how agribusinesses treat humans and animals in a manner that is most convenient to them, whether that is  through oppression, slaughter, speeding-up, or feeding them perfectly engineered, yet nutritionally hazardous food. 

          The question of truth is essential within my dissertation, as I seek to reveal underlying truths at the heart of America’s meat industry, which as I will show, is infamous for falsifying records and manipulating information. Fiction is affiliated with storytelling and is often used as an allegory, yet due to its form appears to be a mere pretence, something that non-fiction practices and can easily mask because it is predetermined to tell the absolute truth. I felt that it is imperative to focus as much on non-fiction as it is on fiction, since fiction is often closer to the truth than the information we are provided with, particularly within this industry. Therefore, I have granted Fast Food Nation and Eating Animals an equal place to The Jungle and My Year of Meats, with the idea that a balance of non-fiction and fiction will help verify discoveries presented by the other and provide us with a closer truth than what we could grasp if we disregarded one form and focused on another. I have concentrated on Fast Food Nation for the fact that Schlosser exposes the profit-driven nature of lucrative corporations and agribusinesses that dismiss human and animal welfare. He documents how workers are reduced to cogs in the packing machine, how corporations deceive trusting customers, and how consuming meat exacerbates derogatory attitudes regarding female sexuality.

          In a similar way to Schlosser who records anecdotes from those affected by the industry, Foer advocates the importance of telling stories about such issues. These stories are both biographical and autobiographical and are presented in sub-categories, such as ‘I Am the Last Poultry Farmer’,   that are explicitly organized to educate. However, this dissertation seeks to prove that fictional narratives are equally important, as they similarly educate readers in the oversight of welfare and can be used as tools to discover truths that are kept hidden from public attention. Sinclair could be considered a journalist like Schlosser and Foer, due to the reason that he worked undercover within Chicago’s stockyards in order to collate information. By investing his findings into the fictional form, Sinclair is able to subtly broadcast his own socialist agenda, without explicitly acting in a politically dissident manner. The conditions that Sinclair described sparked a congressional investigation into sanitation, leading to the passage of food and drug laws, of which I mention in chapter three. Through the fiction form, we are able to see, from Jugris’s perspective, a first-hand account of the corruption that occurred within Chicago’s Packingtown without feeling as though it is purely a propagandist text. The fiction narrative is somewhat successful in this sense, because often meat-eaters do not want to read a text about the animal that their food once was, so by embedding this within a narrative, we come to see and learn the truth that many deny directly learning. Similarly, Ozeki, through Jane’s own documentation and the alternating first-person perspective, discloses many circumstantial facts about corruption within the meat industry, not just in America, but globally. Albert Camus stated that ‘[f]iction is the lie through which we tell the truth’,  and it is through this façade of fiction I want the reader to look, in order to realize just how many truths Ozeki and Sinclair voice.

          Throughout my dissertation, and in regards to truth, I feel that it is important to discuss the relevance of false consciousness in terms of Marxist theory. False consciousness prevents us from seeing the true nature of our social situation, and that is a key matter explored within Ozeki and Sinclair’s novels. Through their publication, both novels strive to arouse us from our passive state and heighten our consciousness. Each of my chapters explores a different kind of false consciousness, whereby modernization and the manner by which information and business is communicated and conducted forces us to believe that current issues, formerly mentioned, are part of the collective norm. With regards to this, my underlying aim is to criticise and argue in opposition to Aristotle’s assertion that ‘man is separated from other animals because he is by nature a political animal’ . This would suppose that man is superior to animals because he possesses the capacity of language, to pass ethical judgement, and to reason. However, what these two novels highlight is how under a state of false consciousness man is not a political being at all, but a mere automaton, and thus subhuman. Similarly, the perpetrator, in this case agribusinesses, male patriarchs, and the media, lack ethical judgement, so do not fulfil the rationale to be considered political and thus, superior. Through discussing what it means to be a political being, I want my reader to question what being an animal means, and whether or not a crack in consciousness or man’s exploitation of human capacities, means that no-one can be considered a political being, but simply an animal’s equivalent.  

Chapter 1 

        Within this chapter I will primarily focus on Adam’s The Sexual Politics Of Meat: A Feminist- Vegetarian Critical Theory , and will argue how The Jungle,  and My Year of Meats,  portray the synonymous relationship between the displacement of animals and women via a process of objectification, fragmentation, and dismemberment. Adam’s argues that patriarchal culture obscures the embodied realities of both subjects through rendering them absent when meat-eating takes place. With nearly a century between Sinclair and Ozeki’s novels, I will analyse and discuss how attitudes regarding women have altered or remained stagnant, as the meat industry has monopolized global markets, the media, and gained considerable political power. 

        The absent referent is the result of a process, whereby for meat to exist, animals in body and name are made absent as they exist exclusively as food. Adams points to three ways in which actual animals are made invisible, all of which have equivalents in the violence against women.  ‘One is literally: […] through meat eating they are literally absent because they are dead,’  as meat encourages consumers to disassociate the food product from the animal killed. ‘Another is definitional’,  in the way that we alter our language to mask the realities of what we consume. For example, at McDonald’s we order a hamburger rather than a compound of more than 100 cattle, and we do not use terms such as cow-meat; only referring to subjects that are socially unacceptable to eat, such as horses. ‘The third way is metaphorical’.  The animal becomes absent when used figuratively to reference something else. Adams uses the example spoken by rape victims, who may say “I felt like a piece of meat”.  This does not refer to the animal or the meat, but is simply a modern collocation used to express one’s feelings. Despite the concrete use of the term ‘meat’, the victim cannot feel like meat because meat is insentient. Therefore, meat refers to something else, it is a continually changing signifier, and the animal is once again rendered absent; absorbed into a ‘metaphoric system of language’.  

         Our method of communication grants corporations the ability to rename and brand animal bodies before consumers participate in eating them. Within The Jungle, Sinclair notes that ‘there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage’.  Here, Sinclair foretells the current controversy that readers of the 21st century face regarding the debasement of sausages that are mass produced and cooked with flavourings and colourings to mask the absence of meat. Consumers have the ability to purchase cheap, perfectly engineered meat, filed into a defect-less casing, that although branded as pork for example, legally must only contain a minimum of 42 percent meat. Therefore, individual animals are omitted so that a profitable, palatable commodity can exist. When such an identity is omitted, so is name. Within Ozeki’s novel, Jane, the protagonist laments: ‘Name is face to all the world’.   In this sense, if a sausage was called a pig, we would associate the live animal with meat, yet when it is called a sausage it exists purely as meat. In accordance, Derrida, within The Animal That I Therefore Am,  considers the role and relationship that name has with mortality, asserting that ‘receiving a name for the first time involves something like the knowledge of being mortal and even the feeling that one is dying […] precisely because the name seeks to save him’.  In this, she questions why humans deny animals the experience of death by depriving them of an identified self-hood. By doing so, animals cannot die because they were never named. As seen in both novels, the animals are only named after death. They become smoked sausages, ‘corned canned beef and “roast beef”,  meaning that once named, they are dying, designed to be consumed. Consequently, the animal never really existed. The absent referent functions to create an appetizing veneer, whereby animals become irrelevant and the consumer can fulfil his cravings without a guilty conscience. Through this, consumers practice and propagate Freud’s theory of repression, where ‘people repress, or drive from their conscious minds, shameful thoughts that then become unconscious’.  In doing so, they reveal how once meat is objectified it becomes detached from morality and man’s moral conscience in the same way that women do. 

        Ozeki’s novel is explicitly concerned with Adam’s pairing between male virility and meat-eating. Fertility is central to the plot and ironically, ignorance allows John to believe that eating hormone-infused beef, later discovered to cause ‘impotence, infertility […] defective sperm production, and low sperm count’,  will help his wife, Akiko, ‘fatten […] up’  and become fertile. John purchases a range of cookbooks in order to subtly command Akiko to cook various meats. He advises that ‘A liberal meat supply […] has always been associated with happy and virile people’.   By forcibly imposing these books upon his wife John insists upon her fertility, mirroring the contemporary, western reliance on the impregnation of female cows through artificial insemination. This is confirmed when Jane’s mother in contrast says: ‘We Japanese get weak genes through many centuries’ process of straight breeding. Like old-fashioned cows. Make weak stock,’   as opposed to American cattle who are subject to enforced selective breeding. With this in mind, it seems ironic that John uses the term ‘liberal’, as this denotes a willingness to accept and respect the behaviour and opinions of others, yet Akiko and the animal that constitute this meat supply are denied autonomy, identity, and thus, a voice. This propagates Marx’s assertion that ‘in bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality’,    as women and animals are absent when a meat-based economic exchange takes place. Under these circumstances, ‘people’ means man and meat-eating becomes a symbol of the established alliance between masculinity, strength, and independence. Therefore, Akiko becomes an economic breeding-machine within John’s all-American eugenic quest. Through this, Ozeki provides a testimony to Foer’s later assertion that ‘farmers breed animals that suffer more acutely because their bodies display characteristics that the industry and consumers demand’,  in that she highlights the American, capitalist call for specifically designed meat where the female, foreign body is destined to suffer and be silenced by men.

        In order to satisfy BEEF-EX, John forces Akiko to partake in the violent act of eating animals, whilst simultaneously projecting modern industrial practices onto her own body. Adam’s documents a woman ‘battered by her husband’ who retells: “It would start off with him being angry over little things […] like cheese instead of meat on a sandwich”,  and another woman who stated: ‘ “A month ago, he threw scalding water over me […] all because I have him a pie with […] vegetables for his dinner, instead of fresh meat”.  These testimonies mirror the violence inflicted upon animals, such as the use of scalding vats that loosen the hair of pigs; a process practiced within The Jungle. Both Ozeki and Sinclair expose the relationship between violence and meat-eating and adhere to Foer’s discovery that ‘ordinary people can become sadistic from the dehumanising work of constant slaughter’.  Through John’s ultimate act of violence, through which he rapes Akiko, leaving her bleeding and bruised, Ozeki reveals the effect that working within the meat industry and being a consumer of meat has upon one’s disposition.  

          The dismemberment and commodification that slaughter requires reflects the exploitation of female bodies. When focusing upon the final economic product, whether that means meat or an animal by-product, it becomes imperative to recognise the role of female reproduction. For example, pigs are confined to gestation crates; hens are stacked in ’67 square inches of space’;   and cows are artificially inseminated, whereby their male calves are taken to become veil. John uses Akiko to provide him with a child. He treats her as though she is a heifer, which is exposed when he realises that she has started her menstrual cycle after a period of amenorrhea. He seizes the opportunity to impregnate her, and rebukes her saying:

you are a sterile, useless woman. […] He held her by the neck, ground her hips into the floor. / “You deserve worse than this for lying to your husband”, […] that I couldn’t smell you bleeding?” […] He ejaculated then collapsed on top of her. 

The connection between blood and violence is significant as blood not only signifies reproduction, but is a literal outcome of slaughter; the slaughter that supposedly alters our disposition. Derek Ryan, within Animal Theory, advocates that ‘the violence inherent in the process of meat eating is of concern to […] ‘character’: […] great eaters of meat are in general more cruel and ferocious than other men’.  Here, Derek validates John’s abusive behaviour, because as a meat eating man he is expected to possess a more violent persona. Like John, Sinclair’s Jugris develops a ‘villainous temper [whereby], he stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them until they were ready to drop with exhaustion’,  whilst simultaneously purchasing prostitutes and exploiting the female body. Accordingly, within Eisnitz’s journalist book Slaughterhouse, an anonymous worker insisted that ‘Down in the blood pit they say that the smell of blood makes you aggressive. […] You get an attitude that if a hog kicks at me […] It has to suffer.’   Once John realises Akiko’s secret, he has to retain his authority. The workers do this by physically torturing the animals, whereas John rapes Akiko and thus, exercises his patriarchal control. Therefore, it is important to consider how such brutalised behaviour towards animals is similarly inflicted upon women; how these novels act as an inquiry into female maltreatment, and the way in which society and the media dissimulates this cruelty to ensure the forgetting of such violence.

        John’s behaviour mirrors that of Gale Dunn who operates The Dunn & Son feedlot. Jane discovers that Gale injects his cows with Lutalyse; a hormone that typically promotes estrus synchronisation and facilitates breeding by artificial insemination. However, Gale uses Lutalyse for its abortifacient effect in cattle within their gestation period, as a method to secure profits. Gale argues: ‘” You can’t have pregnant heifers in a feedlot. All they do is eat, eat, eat, and never gain.”’  Like John, Gale manipulates the female body, forcing the female to gain weight in order to fulfil his own profitable quotas. When Jane explores Lutalyse within Beef Junkies by Dyann Stone, she documents Dyann’s exclamation that ‘it forces them to come into heat simultaneously, within a matter of hours. Imagine! No more, “Not tonight, honey, I’ve got a headache.” This is modern love- efficient, assembly-line artificial insemination and controlled calving.’  Here, Ozeki alludes to the capitalist struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, by which the latter sees his wife as a mere instrument of production.  Subsequently, Ozeki confronts issues regarding utilitarianism, whereby man’s pleasure is prioritised over the pain inflicted upon women. Utilitarians believe in promoting the greatest amount of pleasure, which brings forth the issue that beings are not valued as individuals, but are used as tools, allowing those who are considered the minority to suffer. In a patriarchal, meat-eating world, this means women and animals. 

          In accordance, the male farmer silences, controls, and imposes pain upon the female cow in a similar way to which supervisors within The Jungle, latterly verified within Fast Food Nation, do so to female workers. Male workers allegedly pressure female workers ‘for dates and sex’,   and supposedly it has been known for women to be ‘fondled and grabbed on the production line.’  When seen as instruments, females are objectified and rendered absent, as males view both the female and animal body in the same way that consumers and buyers do, as an economic product that is to be purchased and devoured. Through this, women are transformed into an assembly line tool, where men are able to butcher and dismember them, much like meat. Consequently, the female being cannot protest against meat-eating patriarchy, because the overriding mass-pleasure that supposedly arises from intensive farming, transforms women into an object that has no body or voice to do so with. Therefore, Ozeki broadcasts the feminist-vegetarian concern, that meat-eating virility is a powerfully oppressive source of pleasure, which reflects the gratification experienced by male-dominated agribusinesses who profit from meat in America’s capitalist market. As a result, sex no longer exists independently, but becomes synonymous with efficiency and power, through which modernity endorses mechanical, masculine brutality.

        Despite a ninety-five-year break between the publication of The Jungle and Fast Food Nation, Sinclair recounts stories similar to that in Schlosser’s contemporary text, of how women are sexually deployed within the stockyards. Within the introduction to The Jungle, Renfroe confirms that the ‘Novel touches on […] prostitution’ , which is revealed through the characters of: Mary Dennis, who is recalled to have ‘been seduced’ ; Miss Henderson, of whom if transpires was a ‘kept-women, the former mistress of the superintendent’  who acquires her role as Ona’s boss in order for Connor to silence her; and most significantly, the rape of Ona, and Marija’s surrender to prostitution. However, Miss Henderson and Marija essentially sustain and contribute to the sexual politics of meat. Miss Henderson runs a brothel in down-town Chicago and obtains the role as a fore-lady. She adheres to Schlosser’s discovery that ‘many female workers optimistically regard sex with their supervisor as a way to gain a secure place in American society […] or […] a transfer to an easier job’.  Through her sexual relationship with Connor, Miss Henderson secures her position, and uses this to proliferate the number of prostitutes who work within her department:

she managed her department at Brown's in conjunction with it. […]. When you worked in this woman's department the house downtown was never out of your thoughts all day-— 

In this sense, pleasure is reduced to business and by turning to prostitution women are able to gain a living. Marija is a prime example of this as later in the novel she turns to prostitution in order to sustain herself. Marija states that if one has ‘anything with a price, they ought to sell it’   Here Marija puts a price on her own body and thus, becomes a self-butchered commodity. She indulges in morphine to numb her-self to the barbarity inflicted upon her body, stating: ‘“It’s morphine”, […] “I seem to take more of it every day”. […] If the girls didn’t booze they couldn’t stand it any time at all.’   With regards to the slaughtered animal, this mirrors the way in which animals are rendered unconscious upon entering the slaughterhouse, yet they are not fully killed, so that the blood is pumped out of the body quicker to avoid later contamination. Therefore, they are kept alive as a practicality, just as Marija is. This numbing and sense of false consciousness keeps women in a state of ignorant bliss, like the proletariat in a capitalist state, which I further discuss in chapter two. It could be argued that by yielding to prostitution, women offer their own bodies up as flesh, to be consumed by men upon the assembly line and thus, despairingly contribute to their own oppression. However, once resigned, they are kept in this position by men, similar to the cow who enters the cattle truck on route to the slaughterhouse.

         In accordance with this, Marija is at a disadvantage in that she speaks limited English. Her foreign background positions her as a second-class citizen amongst English-speaking supervisors. Sinclair exposes the reality of many Europeans who became trapped in poverty when entering the stockyards in pursuit of the American dream. Marija reveals that: ‘Here in this city tonight ten thousand women are shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live,’  adding: ‘they bring them from all over. There are seventeen in this place, and nine different countries among them . Like the various breeds of cattle, these women are defined and distinguished by their nationality. The performance of identity and nationality is a fundamental issue that Adams discusses. She asserts that the combination of both ‘racism and sexism together up[hold] meat as white man’s food’,  which positions female foreigners at the bottom of the social-strata. Atwood highlights this within her dystopian novel, The Year of the Flood (2009), when she narrates: ‘He’d ripped up a Scales girl—not a smuggled illegal- alien temporary, they got ripped up all the time’.  Here, women from all different backgrounds and nationalities are butchered through language, as the language used within the fields of prostitution coincide with the language used to describe the slaughter and consumption of animals.   Atwood’s contemporary novel echoes the predatory nature of  male supervisors towards foreign women within Sinclair’s novel, who are considered alien and thus, sub-human. Therefore, the language used to describe women, whether that is through branding them in terms of their origin or describing the sexual attacks projected upon them, both The Jungle and My Year of Meats enforce a feminist-vegetarian defence against patriarchy, as they hint to and challenge the position of the female body in relation to the industry that promotes, processes and packages meat.

Chapter 2

         This chapter will focus on the shift from traditional husbandry to contemporary factory farming and man’s consequent hierarchical relationship with workers and animals in advertence to the absent referent. Singer alleged that ‘industrial farming is responsible for more pain and misery than all the wars of history put together’.  This interdependent relationship between suffering and the meat industry is an accurate summary of, not just the farming and processing in Sinclair’s novel, but also in more contemporary representations. I will look at how the process of acquiring capital contributes to the projection of zoomorphic characteristics upon workers, and how this process arranges the alienation of self, which is essentially more destructive than war because the victim unconsciously surrenders to power and profit seizing businesses without recognition that they are contributing to their own misery. Therefore, such an existence becomes the norm and any hope for revolutionary action against the brutality that industrial farming promises is dispelled. 

          Sinclair’s novel intended to be a critique of the Laissez faire economy, whereby the government becomes less involved in free-market capitalism, leaving agreements between private parties free from interference. As a result, independent slaughterhouses have been bought by large corporations that force them into the factory system, and so the whole process of breeding and slaughtering has been transformed to one centred upon efficiency and the acquisition of capital. Sinclair includes two agribusinesses within his novel, who are supposed to be rivals, yet work in collusion to fix meat prices. Brown’s is a meat packing plant, whereas Durham’s is a fertilizer plant, which were ‘the greatest aggregation of labour and capital ever gathered in one place.’  Sinclair goes onto mention that: ‘Packingtown was really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and compared notes, and there was one […] standard of efficiency,’  and a collaborative speeding-up. In order to keep up with consumer demand for budget meat and maximise profits, large processing plants consolidate and periodically increase the speed of conveyor belts, resulting in increased, yet unrecorded injury rates and the dismemberment of fully conscious animals. 

        The powerful synergy between Brown and Durham’s forecasts the progressive consolidation within the meat industry today. Fast Food Nation displays the relevance of Sinclair’s novel, which could be considered outdated, but in fact paints a true and still current image of aggregation and collusion. Schlosser discusses the role of the Beef Trust and discloses that ‘it set the prices offered for cattle [and] In 1917, at the height of the Beef Trust, the five largest meat-packing companies […] controlled about 55 percent of the market.’  Jugris comes to realise that, ‘The Beef Trust [is] a gigantic combination of capital which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon people.’  Through the power of capital, these organisations can persuade farmers to breed and purchase captive supplies, whereby feedlot operators, such as Gale Dunn, are bound to contracts that ensure packers a steady supply of meat often at a fixed price. This has led to a decline in independent farmers and an increase in political lobbying. Unlike Jugris who comes from Lithuania to Chicago, Akiko observes America through ‘My American Wife!’ and thus, perceives and accepts a glamorised image of the country that the media advertises as ‘” Beefland!”’,  a title well suited to a force that dictates the ‘laws of the land’. According to Akiko, the assimilation of beef-orientated agribusinesses supposedly brings prosperity to the nation, a pretence that Jugris only comes to discover upon his arrival. Ozeki highlights the control that multi-nationals and the media possess, by disclosing that ‘‘BEEF-EX was a national lobby organisation that represented American meats of all kinds—beef, pork, lamb, […]—as well as […] exporters, grain promoters, pharmaceutical companies, and agribusiness groups.’  Here, human and non-human existence is granted equal importance as pork is equivalent to an exporter and lamb to a grain promoter. Sinclair confirmed that the ‘majority of human beings are not yet human beings at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others’,  because as seen in Ozeki’s novel, American workers are assigned an identity affiliated with their labour and the animal with meat, both of which include physical and financial assets.

          With regards to this, identity based on labour transforms workers into human operators, programmed to offer a service. Fast Food Nation focuses on the McDonald’s corporation; a microcosm for modern meat-related practices. It is similar to Brown and Durham’s in that it offers zero-hour contracts, employs unskilled immigrants, and has been accused of wage-theft. The president of McDonald’s said: “Fitting into a finely working machine, that’s what McDonald’s is about’.  Here, the workers work to increase profit and are ‘doomed to be exterminated’, much like the slaughtered animal, because as Marx and Engles pointed out, the price of a commodity is equal to the cost of production. Through this, agribusinesses have ensured that the existence of both animal and worker only prevails in the final commodity, whereby identity becomes a matter of human capital. Sinclair notes that ‘Jugris was a man whose soul had been murdered’,  because although he exists physically, his former, individual self is rendered absent, mirroring the animal who is physically transformed into insentient meat at the hands of profit accumulating corporations. 

          Within this market society, the capitalist depends on the exploitation of the human operator. Therefore, man’s labour becomes invisible and he exists only through the market capital of meat. A socialist ambassador points out to Jugris that ‘You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are dulled, your souls are numbed.’  In other words, by the end of the novel Jugris has emerged from a class society that distorts the consciousness of the proletariat. It is not a specific sense that is dulled, but one’s cognitive framework, as the bourgeoisie alter this to inhibit workers’ perception and lure them into a state of stupor, as to avoid revolution. Yet, as the novel progresses, Jugris discovers class consciousness where he learns of his own exploitation and joins the prevailing socialist movement that promises a fairer economy. Socialism is a ‘theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole’, rather than a select few. Through this seemingly social ideal, workers such as Jugris and Jane could experience new modes of living and not face corporate alienation. Sinclair strives to arouse the reader to pursue the overthrow of capitalism, which he reveals through the explicit imperative: ‘We shall bear down the opposition […] CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”’ . The modal verbs ‘shall’ and ‘WILL’ highlight a degree of certainty and an obligation to act. Whilst ‘OURS’ proposes a collective revolution, whereby class boundaries and human operators cease to exist. 

           Meanwhile, Ozeki acknowledges the modern collective struggle to maintain consciousness. Akiko warns ‘A crack in consciousness is a dangerous thing’,  in that Japanese housewives are conditioned to believe that meat is wholesome and healthy, when the producers of My American Wife! know otherwise. The media therefore, is a conscious shaping mechanism, revealed when Jane discloses that:

Fed on a media diet […] we are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes […]. Our collective norm.  

Here, she suggests that people succumb to wilful ignorance, because although consumers know that information propagated by the media is false, they prefer to deny it because it might be disturbing or painful. Ignorance is thus a structured act, and the consumer becomes empowered through the thought that their knowledge corresponds with powerful organisations who project their own subjective view. However, once their own subjectivity is lost, animals and workers no longer possess the capacity to respond to their environment. Therefore, they are not empowered, but are exploited and lured into a state of false consciousness, echoing the oblivious, stunned animal. 

          Furthermore, Ignorance creates divisions between consumers, workers, animals and onlookers. In accordance with Adam’s The vegetarian quest, workers are masked from knowing the nothingness of meat, which arises when ‘one sees that it came from something, […] and it has been made into non-thing, no-body’.  Here, ignorance enables workers to overlook that the item they must dismember was an animal, because by the time it appears it is already food. Similarly, when visitors come to Brown and Durham’s to witness an assembly line, the workers are mere cogs in the machine. Jugris states that ‘this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed […] all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and memory’.  These crimes are hidden from sight because people do not want to accept undercover revelations regarding brutality within slaughterhouses. It is easier to accept the slaughtered pig as a sausage rather than an eviscerated carcass, and a worker as a tool rather than a sentient being, because once the animal exists as a cut of meat or the worker as a tool, they have ‘no existence at all’.  The covert nature of the factory farm also helps to organise on a mass-scale the forgetting of violence  and the past, through which current practices are accepted and go unquestioned. Therefore workers, like the mass-produced sausage, become a mass body of labour and our ignorance to their suffering becomes the collective norm.

        After a while working within the meat packing plants, Jugris adopts the characteristics of meat not simply zoomorphic traits, as he has been a ‘victim of ravenous vultures that had […] devoured him’.  Ozeki and Sinclair acknowledge that meat packing giants become predatory animals as they lack the human capacity of ethics, but also that this results in the death of both the animal and the worker who encounter them. Jugris is described to have become ‘a wild beast, a thing without sense or reason, without rights, without affections, without feelings.’  Here, Sinclair foregrounds the binary between animal and human, as one is defined by the absence of characteristics that the other possesses. Humans are attributed cognitive characteristics such as reason, yet women and workers were thought to possess these to a lesser degree, which explains their incarceration to a reduced moral status. Within The Death of the Animal    Cavalieri’s fictional character, Alexandra, participates in a Socratic discussion regarding the characteristics and value of beings.  She states that ‘the criterion for access […] to rights […] is simply the fact of being an agent, that is an intentional being that has goals and wants to achieve them’.  However, when taking false-consciousness into account, and the workers subsequent lack of agency, Alexandra’s theory justifies the ‘speeding up […] and grinding them to pieces,’ because workers lack the rationale to be granted rights. Later in the novel, Jugris is reunited with Jack Duane, who asks: ‘Have you been through a sausage machine?”   Through working within Chicago’s stockyards Jugris has been disfigured, he has become the product of his labour and no longer exists as a self-conscious man. Therefore, he is appropriately dissociated with morality. Ryan asks us to question whether ‘all animals are entitled to continue their lives, whether or not they have such a conscious interest, unless and until pain and decrepitude make death no longer a harm’.  If we look at this statement with regards to Jugris, it seems almost as though the processing plants, through wearing him out, altering his entire disposition, and reducing him to a ‘sausage’, make death a desired escape. 

          In accordance, Sinclair reveals that: ‘now he was a […] damaged article. […] They […] had worn him out, with their speeding up […] and now they had thrown him away!’  The singular noun ‘article’ reiterates Jugris’ insignificant presence in the larger mechanic unit. He can no longer keep up with an industry that relies on mechanic strength and energy, and as a result, his limited human capacity ensures that he is fired. Jugris is no longer a whole body, but is damaged and therefore, becomes a by-product; part of a carcass that is rendered into a profitable product, such as lard or canned meat. The word ‘canned’ gives connotations to being fired, which reflects how workers are ‘throw[n] […] into the gutter’,  and become inconsequential within the industrial milieu. Furthermore, Sinclair divulges that if ill-fated workers fell into a vat, they might be ‘overlooked for days, till all the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!’   Although, this was never verified, perhaps Sinclair wished to prompt the public to care as much for workers as they did eating contaminated meat. It also questions the idea of cannibalism, which acts as a trope for corporate cannibalism, whereby a predatory, unrestrained will to consume ensures that workers are ‘overlooked’, become their labour, and are defined by market capital. By taking both of these accounts into consideration, workers are not just metaphorically transformed into meat, but literally too. Consequently, Sinclair criticises the arguments regarding decrepitude and false-consciousness, as we are left questioning whether these two features justify the killing of animals and workers.

          American consumer culture has become obsessed with efficiency and output, which has facilitated the rise in machinery. Workers are forced to carry out piece-work, repeatedly performing the same automated move. As Jugris and his family realise that the American dream is a capitalist fabrication they lose sight of their future, and not only do they work alongside machines, they become them:

The woman did not go on; she stayed right there—[…] year after year, twisting sausage links and racing with death. It was piece work, […] and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she could only do this work by working just as she did, with all her soul upon her work, […] as at some wild beast in a menagerie.  

Therefore, she becomes an embodiment of the machine and every faculty she possesses that does not facilitate the processing of meat is eradicated. Here, Sinclair reiterates Cavalieri’s criteria for rights, in that workers are unable to think, let alone act out against the system or attend to their future goals and human needs. Consequently, they become meat and machines, and live purely to satisfy the needs of the bourgeois, hence Sinclair’s handling of the collective noun ‘menagerie’, meaning: ‘A collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition’;  an exhibition that is once again profitable only to economic enterprises in their relentless drive for capital.

         The concept of the other with regards to a collection of animals is interesting, as these novels harbour a collection of nationalities such as Lithuanian and Japanese, all of who value familial relationships and thus, stand in contrast to the materialistic American. Through this, it becomes evident that both novels criticise the capitalist ethic that promotes a contriving subservience to false appetites, and a consequent division in assets between the bourgeoisie and other subordinate groups. Therefore, the novels subtly assess the prevalence of speciesism within America’s meat industry. Speciesism is a theory coined by psychologist Richard D. Ryder, whereby people feel no obligation to treat and care for other non-human beings because they believe to possess greater moral rights. However, this can be extended to gender, class, and nationality within the human species. Within “Experiments on Animals,”  it is discussed that Ryder had wrote: 

both “race” and “species” are vague terms used in the classification of living creatures according, largely, to physical appearance’.  

Racism is considered an illegal hate crime and the logic behind speciesism is almost identical, making it logically and morally wrong to inflict suffering upon individual non-human beings. Within the meat industry, those who wish to increase the economy of sale, like Gale, do so at the expense of animals and workers, like Jugris, who through such oppression become slaves to agribusinesses and are ground into nihility. Through advocating speciesism, racism could be justified and allowed to flourish. Therefore, relationships with this industry are now defined by a constant battle between master and slave; those who force migrant workers to act merely through their physical bodies and those who fight for the instruments that grant them human rights.

       

          Through a modern shift towards corporatisation and unbridled consumption, animals and workers become a means to an end, rather than a means unto themselves. Through this, relationships in a traditional, mutually-symbiotic sense, between worker and animal and supervisor and worker, have been removed, giving way to a parasitic relationship where one benefits at the expense of the other. I will discuss Lord of the Barnyard (1998)  in contrast to Ozeki’s novel, because despite being published in the same year, Egolf depicts a young farmer who strives to maintain his dead-fathers farm, despite societies concern with his reclusive and independent behaviour, whereas Ozeki focuses on Gale’s commitment to an all-inclusive factory farm system. 

          Industrial slaughterhouses desire a quick turn-around. Animals are fed hormone infused food in order to gain weight and be sent to slaughter in shorter time-spans. This efficiency increases profit, lowers labour costs, and renders farmers both absent and useless. Therefore, I contest that in a definitional sense, farmers cease to be farmers on a factory farm and animals cease to be animals, but simply a means to an end. Foer exposes this when he remarks: ‘This is what a slaughterhouse is all about […] On the plate in front of me is the end that promises to justify all the bloody means next door’.  Therefore, the process of traditional farming is outdated, it no longer holds an identified space in the mind of consumers because all that matters is the end product. With regards to this cultural shifting, The Dunn & Son feedlot stands in contrast to John’s independent small-holding in Lord of the Barnyard.  John builds his own farm, gives his sheep an individual name, and allows his accumulation of poultry to run free around the Kaltenbrunner estate. He single-handedly, without influence from large, autocratic corporations and pharmaceuticals, runs the farm, where he can dictate his own profits and working hours:

His accomplishments as a juvenile, autodidactic rancher/ farmer […] required the utilization of every faculty, spare moment, and resource at his disposal, and he [was…] motivated by necessity. He’d never thought possible the materialisation of any element which […] could conceivably come to stand between him and the farm.  

Like the characters within The Jungle, who surrender their whole existence to carry out piece-work, John also dedicates his life to the rearing and slaughtering of his animals. Yet, John chooses this existence and is motivated by ‘necessity’, not profit margins. John’s farm preserves his heritage and it is this that he pursues, unlike Ozeki’s Gale. The Dunn’s feedlot is primarily an agribusiness, as it is a required service that prioritises commercial and economic interests, highlighted when Jane observes that cattle ‘were breeds, not animals […] ‘Beef-to-be. Angus, Hereford […] and Simmental’, which was ‘antithetical to the randomness of living things’.   By defining the cow in terms of its meaty-end, it becomes directly opposed to a living being, it is systemised and becomes a victim of eugenics. Jane highlights the struggle to maintain traditional farms in the face of modernity when she reveals that her grandparents ‘were dairy farmers [who] Lost the[ir] proverbial farm to agribusinesses and turbocows.’  ‘Turbo’ denotes a motor vehicle, and by applying this to a cow, Jane accentuates the modern, agronomist attitude towards farming, whereby cows and workers alike have been revolutionised into machines. 

Chapter 3

           This chapter will concentrate on the use of chemicals and hormones within America’s meat industry and the simultaneous manipulation that allows the global distribution of unsanitary and adulterated meats. Sinclair exposes how meat is made out of dead rats and by-products that are coloured and riddled with chemicals, whilst Ozeki reveals how cattle are fed illegal drugs, manure, and animal by-products. Meanwhile, the American culture of meat-consumption has expanded globally due to how meat is advertised. With regards to the Hypodermic Needle Theory (HNT), I will discuss how unsanitary meat is promoted and portrayed to consumers in the pursuit of profit. The proliferating use of drugs corresponds with the development of assembly lines, whereby modern factories built for mass production have become an ideal location for the spread of deadly pathogens. I will argue and expose how health issues exposed within The Jungle are still prevalent, and ever increasing in today’s market, as revealed by Ozeki. 

           Ironically, Ozeki’s novel is centred upon Jane’s exploration of illegal drugs used within the meat industry. However, Jane is the creative director of a Japanese production company who works with BEEF-EX to promote the consumption of American beef. Through the programme My American Wife! Jane must ‘” foster among Japanese housewives a proper understanding of the wholesomeness of U.S. meats”,’  despite being fully aware of the use of antibiotics and consequent hormone poisoning. Sinclair’s novel intended to be a cry for labour justice, yet ended up launching a consumer movement that led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair disclosed how large corporations, with their ‘monolithic nature […] grind out maximum profits without regard for the health of the American populace.’   Despite trying to encourage an outrage for the relentless grinding of workers, readers were more concerned about their own health and what they put into their mouths. Therefore, both novels educate readers, with Jane adopting a similar role to Sinclair, in that she collates information and produces a documentary to warn readers and resolve illusions that the HNT promises.

        The Dunn and Son Feedlot acts as a metonym for the synonymous relationship between America’s meat industry and pharmaceutical companies. The feedlot prototype epitomises modern-day intensive farming. It arose in the mid-20th century as a commercial establishment ideally located near a slaughterhouse, with a focus on efficient growth and weight gain. Feedlots are also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), whereby cattle are fed antibiotics to promote growth and prevent diseases spreading in such closely confined areas. Gale adopts the factory farm- pharmaceutical philosophy, as he believes that cattle are purely valued as a commodity and thus, their natural form must undergo adulteration. Through this, he adheres to Foer’s assertion that this system, focused on profit, is ‘removed from food animals’,  because by the time the heads of cattle reach Gale’s feedlot, they are already seen as marketable meat-products. The pre-modifier ‘food’ hints to the manipulation of genetics and the practice of eugenics, which strives to create the most profitable, preferred cuts of meat. As a result, Gale can identify with food, but is distanced from the food-animal, as the latter is rendered absent. 

          Accordingly, in order to keep up with demand from both consumers and packers, Gail utilises the drugs available to him, admitting that: ‘“Profit’s so small these days you gotta deal in volume, and without the drugs we’d be finished’. Here, he refers to feed conversion efficiency, whereby with the extra use of hormones, such as DES, cattle can gain weight quicker without spending excess on expensive cattle feed. Gale’s exposition reveals that he must adopt a high-yielding system or else he will lose his job, like Jane’s grandparents who didn’t accept the advances in technology and science. Likewise, Gale’s father John, possesses a more traditional attitude towards farming, revealed when he belligerently laments: ‘You gotta be a goddamned chemist to fatten up a cow”.  This draws attention to the dangerous relationship between pharmaceutical companies and meat processing plants, in that feed efficiency coincides with economic efficiency. A chemist denotes someone involved in the experimentation of drugs, which highlights how modern day farming is almost a scientific experiment with regards to genetically modified food, antibiotics, and hormones. The two coexist in the modern market and Gale is a prime example of someone who adheres to, and propagates efficiency over the health of both consumers and workers:

Sure, there were accounts of farmers who accidently breathed or ingested DES powder and started showing symptoms such as impotence, infertility, gynecomastia (enlarged tender breasts) […]. But in the face of all that promised profit.  

This reveals Gale’s underlying motive, profit. When using drugs to increase efficiency profit is guaranteed, yet only specific ‘accounts’ of hormone poisoning has been recorded, and once more is purely accidental, making what is ‘promised’ the obvious path to pursue. Therefore, although Gale is a slave to the processors and packers that purchase his cattle, he seems proud of his ability to ‘personally supervise the mixin’ [of] the feeds and medicines”’  because this grants him a position within the beef industry’s modern structure.

            The equivalent violence towards women and animals as discussed in Chapter one, is a fundamental affiliation that must be explored with regards to the presence of drugs in both meat and the industrial feedlot setting. When Jane arrives at Gail’s feedlot she meets Bunny Dunn and her five-year-old daughter, Rose Dunn. After a tour of the neighbouring slaughterhouse, Jane is shocked by Rose’s mature body and enlarged breasts. Later she discovers that this is due to hormone poisoning of which Dave, one of the crew members, recognises as ‘oestrogen poisoning, [caused by] stimulants in meat or milk or poultry, [most likely from] DES’.  Here, Dave names the possible causes of poisoning through an asyndetic list. This hints at the continuous process of contamination that ends up on our plates and the widespread prescription of drugs to different species, which helps to cut costs and increase efficiency. However, the fact that DES is only ‘suspected’  is somewhat dubious as it makes detecting the origin of a disease difficult and thus, overlooked, as there is no solid evidence for it being the definite cause of ill-health. The secrecy that surrounds animal feed is foregrounded when Jane confronts Gale about the ingredients used within his feedlot and he replies: ‘“Boss’s special formula”.’  Firstly, by referring to himself using the honorific title ‘Boss’, he highlights that decisions made within the meat industry are dictated by the elite, such as the Beef Trust and the FDA, who make decisions based on economy rather than consumer welfare. Secondly, the concept that animal feed has been transformed into a ‘formula’, reveals that food is now aligned with mathematical equations. Food is no longer sustenance, but a controlled process of feeding that must adhere to and reach certain quotas. And thirdly, ‘special’ insinuates that this feed is different from other feeds used within the industry and is therefore, subject to preference rather than national guidelines. The ingredients used on feedlots vary according to different premixes that contain various chemical preservatives, vitamins, and antibiotics. Therefore, Jane’s questioning and Gail’s allusive answers depict the truth of how American and international consumers of meat, are kept ignorant to what is in their food and how this affects their bodies.

          With regards to the manipulation of the female body, when exploring the character of Bunny Dunn, it could be argued that she initially represents a post-feminist world, as she happily accepts her position in this patriarchal meat-eating setting. However, through Jane’s journey into self-consciousness, and subsequent documentation, Bunny learns to acknowledge and accept the corrupt nature of intensive farming and its impact on her daughter’s body. Through this, the novel advocates the need for a re-emergence in feminist protest. Bunny is introduced as a character who is wilfully ignorant to carnivorous males that inject their cattle with oestrogens, often prescribed to promote ‘” post-partum breast engorgement’,  of which Rose, and perhaps Bunny herself, have become victims of. Within Eating Animals, Foer introduces us to Frank Reese who claims to be ‘The Last Poultry Farmer’.  He discloses how ‘he’s seeing all kind of illnesses that he never used to see’ and how ‘girls are going through puberty much earlier […] Everyone knows it’s our food’.  Despite this assumption, Bunny initially chooses to ignore Jane’s warning that Rose’s five-year-old body is undergoing puberty due to the use of DES on their feedlot. This reveals a generational divide between traditional and modern farmers, as Bunny is conditioned to accept their current circumstances as both natural and normal. Bunny flaunts her over-sized breasts, remarking that ‘These babies are Nature’s bounty. That’s what John calls ‘em. No artificial growth enhancement here”.  By acknowledging that John labels her breasts, Bunny accepts the voyeuristic male gaze, but more significantly, the very fact that she must decide whether or not her breasts are natural or enhanced by drugs, highlights how consumers can’t be sure to whether their body is being manipulated, or whether, when participating in the modern consumption of animal products, one’s body can ever remain completely natural. 

          In regards to the question of what is natural, Bunny’s initial ignorance reveals the compliant attitude consumers adopt when told information by those in a higher social position, such as feedlot operators, the media, and agribusinesses. It is ironic that Bunny refers to her breasts as ‘Nature’s bounty’, because according to Gale, certain hormones he uses within his operation are in fact, natural. Gale claims that he does not use DES within his feeding programme, stating that ‘it’s illegal’,  and instead uses Synovex, ‘a growth hormone. Perfectly legal. […] All natural’.  This raises the question to whether legality and nature are bound in this modern climate, and whether we have become so accustomed to the exposure of pharmaceutical products that they have become a natural and almost innate part of our genetic make-up. By introducing her breasts as natural, Bunny displays wilful ignorance, as she clearly acknowledges the impact that DES has upon the female body, yet such knowledge would force her to accept her own negligence in keeping Rose safe from such exposure. Furthermore, Gale’s illusion links back to Schlosser’s assertion that ‘The Drug Administration does not require flavour companies to disclose the ingredients of their additives, so long as all the chemicals are considered by the agency to be GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe).  If Gale was to admit to using artificial hormones, he reveals the ‘chemical wizardry’ involved in the making of meat, and thus raises concerns about how safe his meat is. If he regards them as ‘generally’ safe, as natural and legal, he is able to pursue his career, overlook one-off foodborne illnesses, and gain capital without further inspection.

        The health of consumers often lies in the hands of large agribusinesses who routinely oppose further regulation of food safety practices. Through this they avoid the accountability imposed on consumer products and are not hold liable for ill-health, or illegal practice. Bunny admits that these agribusinesses dictate the ‘laws of the land’ when she says:

This here’s ranch country, girl, and we do what we want when we want, without no government’s say-so. […] Your East Coast politicians can’t say boo out here.’  

This statement precedes Jane’s discovery that Gale does in fact inject his cattle with DES, despite an apparent ban in 1979,  which clearly remains overlooked by federal inspectors from the FDA and results ‘inconclusive’.   Once again, Bunny’s statement alludes back to the concept of America as ‘Beefland’, because by defining the ranch as a ‘country’, she admits that the meat industry upholds its own governance, separate from America. Accordingly, Bunny sets a boundary in place between the west and the east, suggesting that the west is the free ‘ranch country’, whilst the east is governed and regulated. However, this seems to conflict with Sinclair’s novel, located in Chicago, that similarly exposes the indolence surrounding meat inspection:

Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a government inspector, […] not haunted by the fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his testing. […] notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched.  

Despite the presence of an official government inspector, meat continues to go unchecked and sold to the public. Within the ‘ranch country’ the politicians supposedly ‘can’t’ contest the hygiene of meat because of either, the power that agribusinesses possess with regards to the law and lobbying, or the distance between operations, which contrasts with the concentrated design of Packingtown, making strict regulation time-consuming and impractical. Yet even in the east, in Chicago, where government inspectors can guarantee that the meat sold is safe, choose not to do so. Inevitably, Sinclair’s novel led to the amendment of the Meat Inspection Act that had proven to be ineffective. However, it is clear from Ozeki’s more contemporary novel, that covert economic and political ties have ensured that meat inspection remains sub-standard, making Sinclair’s Beef Trust and Ozeki’s BEEF-EX the embodiment of blind and callous greed. Therefore, as long as lobbying and plutocratic profit endures, so does the deterioration of consumer health.

         Ozeki’s novel foregrounds the spread of American consumer-culture by alternating between the perspectives of Jane and Akiko. Akiko consumes the meat that has been promoted to her by My American Wife! which first and foremost targets ‘Japanese housewives with school-aged children’.  This is similar to the way that Schlosser recalls how McDonald’s promotes their food to children, by creating playgrounds and happy meals. My American Wife! is similar to McDonald’s in that it chooses attractive and seemingly happy families to represent America, whilst McDonald’s creates mini-worlds and meals that promise children happiness. Through the HNT, these advertising strategies attract consumers who invest their trust into corporations. Schlosser highlights this when he analyses a survey from 1990 that reveals how children felt that ‘Ronald McDonald knew what kids should eat.’  This echoes the relationship between Akiko and John, as she trusts his claim that meat will make her strong and fertile. However, this conflicts with Lara and Dyann, a lesbian, American couple who ethically and politically oppose eating meat after researching how meat is processed. Through this contrast between the front-line American couple and the commercially influenced Japanese woman, Ozeki exposes how meat is marketed to global consumers that remain unaware and ignorant to the hormones used within the industry. This issue of advertisement is reiterated through the strategy used by My American Wife! as it seeks to ‘develop a powerful synergy between commercials and the documentary vehicles, in order to stimulate consumer purchase motivation’.  Through this, the boundary between documentaries and commercials are blurred and truth and illusion become one. Sinclair similarly exposes the illusive nature of the meat industry when he recalls how canned meat was often flavoured and coloured to appear like the meat labelled on the can. As a result, Sinclair gives evidence to Schlosser’s later revelation that the ‘job of the flavourist is to conjure illusions about processed food […] to ensure “consumer likeability”.’  In this case the flavourist represents corporations, fast food outlets, agribusinesses and advertising agencies, who promote meat as nutritional, wholesome, and delicious, in order to gain profit and expand their enterprises globally.

          In conclusion, Rose Dunn epitomises the injustice and deception that dictates the meat industry’s more private and personal sphere, whereas Sinclair employs certain characters, such as Kristoforas, as a metonym for nationwide matters. Jugris discovers that Kristoforas has died. He immediately suspects meat as the cause, including smoked sausage, or pork that has tuberculosis. Sinclair describes that hours after eating the food, he experienced convulsions and died. This story from 1906 draws parallels to the first anecdote in Schlosser’s ‘What’s in the meat.’  Schlosser narrates the story of Lee Harding, who suffered cramps after eating a chicken taco. From a modern perspective, it is evident what Kristoforas died of, yet due to gaps in food safety regulations his diagnosis was left to guess work, unlike Harding. However, it therefore becomes crucial to question the origin of illnesses, as they evidently still continue to derive from diseased meat. Sinclair demonstrates this through presenting us with a series of rhetorical questions, such as:

How could they know that the pale-blue milk […] doctored with formaldehyde besides? […] and how was she to know they were adultered? How could they find out […] that their canned peas had been coloured with copper salts, and their fruits, jams with aniline dyes?  

Nearly a century later, with all our technological advances we are still confronted with the same questions. Terms such as natural, kosher, free-range, and organic have lost their true meanings, and we continue to be deceived by corporations and agribusinesses that we should ultimately trust.  

Conclusion

           Each chapter highlights the fact that behind every meal is an absence. This dissertation seeks to prove that through literature, we may learn how in a system that is governed by agribusinesses, non-human and human beings have ultimately been transformed into property that aid in the acquisition of profit. America’s meat industry upholds the capitalist ethic of unrestrained competition that propagates the commodification of everything including workers, women and animals. Although The Jungle was intended to be a call for labour justice, the response following publication was instead focused upon the sanitation and content of meat, like My Year of Meats. Both novels reveal how the health of citizens comes secondary to money, politics, and power, and so the third chapter reveals that within America’s economy, the consumer is also rendered absent in corporate thought. 

          The first chapter explores the sexual politics of meat; whereby both women and animals are made absent when meat-eating takes place. It seems imperative to direct our attention onto how the slaughtering of animals mirrors the way in which women are continuously butchered through language, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential elections. Trump has been criticised for his sexist remarks that contribute to the objectification of the female body. With regards to the media, he stated: ‘"You know, it doesn't matter what [they] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."’  Here, Trump reveals the predatory nature of meat-eating men, as he suggests that women are only of benefit or interest to society if they possess a desirable body. My American Wife! insists upon the filming of attractive women, regardless of self, which sadly foreshadows Trumps patriarchal manner and voyeuristic gaze. This adheres to Adam’s assertion that the fixation on physicality is inextricably connected to American culture’s cannibalistic impulse to value animals as the referent, in other words as nothing but a piece of meat. This thesis argues that the way in which Sinclair and Ozeki portray the silencing, suffering and fragmentation of female bodies in 1906 and 1998, is still very much prevalent in American culture today. 

           America’s meat industry that Sinclair exposed in 1906, has proven to be no better off now than it was then. Sinclair’s novel highlights how capitalist production systematically disregards consumer health in favour of profit, which has continued into the 21st century. The rise in feedlots, as portrayed by Ozeki, has turned farms into disease factories, whereby the use of antibiotics has caused a direct risk to public health as residues are left in the meat we consume. Recently, the FDA has advocated certain voluntary guidelines, advising businesses to remove “weight gain” and “feed efficiency” from labels as a reason to prescribe anti-biotics to food-animals. Instead, they are recommended to state that these drugs are purely used for disease prevention. Such contemporary practices echo the manipulation of information printed on labels in Sinclair’s day, where the ingredients of canned meat were omitted, so as not to cause a public outcry. Again, this is alluded to in Ozeki’s novel, as Gale fails to disclose the presence of DES. Now, in a post-Brexit society, it is vital that UK consumers demand transparency, as talks over a trade deal ensure that American beef could once again enter our economy. If we think back to what it means to be a political being, as mentioned in the introduction, if we are kept in a state of false-consciousness, do we surrender ourselves to the machine and, like animals, become a means to America’s capitalist end? 

          Whilst I felt that my research was carefully selected, I am aware of its limitations. As a vegetarian, British citizen I am unable to experience American meat first hand, or personally interview feedlot operators, packers, and processors. Consequently, I had to rely on information given by others, such as Sinclair, Ozeki, Schlosser and Foer. However, this could seem somewhat paradoxical, in that these texts are forms of media in themselves, and whilst warning consumers against false information advertised by the media, I, myself am investing my trust in information provided by others. Therefore, I have strived to remain my own conscious agent and write an argument that investigates how the various absent referents, alluded to within these texts, continue to be oppressed within America’s political climate.

Bibliography

Adams, Carol J, The Sexual Politics Of Meat, 1st edn (New York: Bloomsbury Revelations, 2015)

Adams, Carol J., POST MEAT-EATING, 1st edn, 2017, pp. 1-26 <http://caroljadams.com/an-animal-manifesto/> [accessed 22 February 2017]

Agee, James, A Mother's Tale, 1st edn (Encounter Archives, 1958) <http://file:///C:/Users/14058162/Downloads/download%20(1).pdf> [accessed 10 October 2016]

"Ask A Farmer: What Is A Cattle Feedlot?", Agriculture Proud, 2017 <https://agricultureproud.com/2012/10/08/ask-a-farmer-what-is-a-cattle-feedlot/> [accessed 10 March 2017]

Atwood, Margaret, The Year Of The Flood (London: Virago, 2010)

Aubrey Allison, “Fast-Food Ceos Earn Supersize Salaries; Workers Earn Small Potatoes”, NPR.Org, 2014, < http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/22/305859588/fast-food-ceos-earn-supersized-salaries-workers-earn-small-potatoes> [accessed 1 February 2017]

 "BBC - Ethics - Animal Ethics: The Ethics Of Speciesism", Bbc.Co.Uk, 2017 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/rights/speciesism.shtml> [accessed 11 January 2017]

Brecht, Bertolt, John Willett, and Ralph Manheim, Saint Joan Of The Stockyards, 1st edn (London: Methuen, 1991)

Beauvoir, Simone de, Constance Borde, and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, The Second Sex, 1st edn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Billig, Michael, Freudian Repression, Conversation Creating The Unconscious, 1st edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 1 <http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/50526/sample/9780521650526wsc00.pdf> [accessed 3 January 2017]

 Cavalieri, Paola and Peter Singer, The Death Of The Animal, 1st edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009)

 Cavalieri, Paola, "The Death Of The Animal: A Dialogue // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University Of Notre Dame", Ndpr.Nd.Edu, 2009 <http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-death-of-the-animal-a-dialogue/> [accessed 6 March 2017]

"Challenging Concentration Of Control In The American Meat Industry On JSTOR", Jstor.Org, 2004 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/4093409?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents> [accessed 28 February 2017]

Cohen, Claire, "Donald Trump Sexism Tracker: Every Offensive Comment In One Place", The Telegraph, 2017 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/donald-trump-sexism-tracker-every-offensive-comment-in-one-place/> [accessed 14 March 2017]

Daniels, Aaron B and Laura M Daniels, Journey To The Voids, 1st edn (London: Aeon Books, 2011)

Daniels, Jeff, "The American Beef Industry Is Watching Trump's Talks With May Closely", CNBC, 2017 <http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/27/american-beef-industry-sees-brexit-as-big-stakes-opportunity.html> [accessed 14 March 2017]

"Do Mcdonald's Burgers Contain Beef From Up To 100 Or Or Even 1000 Different Cows?", What Makes Mcdonald's, 2012 <http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/whatmakesmcdonalds/questions/food/beef/do-mcdonalds-burgers-contain-beef-from-up-to-100-or-or-even-1000-different-cows.html> [accessed 27 October 2016]

"Definition Of Diethylstilbestrol", Medicinenet, 2012 <http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=2990> [accessed 17 January 2017]

Derrida, Jacques and David Wills, "The Animal That Therefore I Am", JSTOR, 2002 <http://www.englweb.umd.edu/englfac/KChuh/Clark.Seminar.Doc.1.Derrida.TheAnimalThereforeIAm.pdf> [accessed 21 December 2016] 

Dobash, R. Emerson and Dobash, Russel, Violence Against Wives: A Case Against the Patriarchy (New York: The Free Press, 1979)

Egolf, Tristan, Lord Of The Barnyard, 1st edn (New York: Grove Press, 2000)

"Food Processing & Slaughterhouses", GRACE Communications Foundation, 2017 <http://www.sustainabletable.org/279/food-processing-slaughterhouses> [accessed 1 March 2017]

 Foer, Jonathan Safran, Eating Animals, 1st edn (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2009)

Gail A Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, 1st edn (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997)

Greenwood, Veronique, "The Mystery Of What Goes Into Sausages", Bbc.Com, 2014 <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141017-just-what-goes-into-your-sausage> [accessed 12 February 2017]

Godlovitch, Stanley, Rosalind Godlovitch, and John Harris, Animals, Men And Morals: An Enquiry Into The Maltreatment Of Non-Humans ; Edited By Stanley And Rosalind Godlovitch And John Harris, 1st edn (London: Gollancz, 1971)

Hauter, Wenonah, Foodopoly, 1st edn (New York: New Press, 2014)

Heilbroner, Robert L, Marxism, For And Against, 1st edn (New York: Norton, 1980)

"Hypodermic Needle Theory", Utwente.Nl, 2017 <https://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20Clusters/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory/> [accessed 16 January 2017]

"Is Ignorance Bliss?" (Radio 4: BBC, 2016)

Jenkins, McKay, Food Fight: Gmos And The Future Of The American Diet, 1st edn (Avery Publishing Group, 2017)

Levy, Deborah, Diary Of A Steak, 1st edn ([London?]: Books Works, 1997)

Lewis, David, Truth In Fiction, 1st edn (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1978), pp. 37-46 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/20009693> [accessed 28 February 2017]

Libecap, Gary D, "The Rise Of The Chicago Packers And The Origins Ofmeat Inspection And Antitrust.", Freepatentsonline.Com, 1992 <http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Economic-Inquiry/12414955.html> [accessed 12 March 2017]

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels, Manifesto Of The Communist Party, 1st edn (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1848) <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf> [accessed 6 February 2017]

"Meatpacking In America: Still A Jungle Out There? . NOW | PBS", Pbs.org, 2015 <http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html> [accessed 9 December 2016]

"Meat | MEATONOMIC$", Meatonomics.Com, 2016 <https://meatonomics.com/tag/meat/> [accessed 12 March 2017]

"Menagerie - Definition Of Menagerie In English | Oxford Dictionaries", Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2017 <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/menagerie> [accessed 10 January 2017]

Mehta, Nina, "My Year Of Meats", Salon, 2017 <http://www.salon.com/1998/07/01/sneaks_60/> [accessed 10 March 2017]

McDonough, John and Karen Egolf, The Advertising Age Encyclopedia Of Advertising, 1st edn (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2002)

Munro, André, "Class Consciousness | Sociology", Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013 <https://www.britannica.com/topic/class-consciousness> [accessed 8 January 2017]

Nussbaum, Martha C., Frontiers Of Justice Disability, Nationality, Species Membership: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership, 1st edn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007)

Ozeki, Ruth, My Year Of Meats, 1st edn (Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd, 2013)

Ostlind, Emilene, "The Big Four Meatpackers", Hcn.Org, 2011 <http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.5/cattlemen-struggle-against-giant-meatpackers-and-economic-squeezes/the-big-four-meatpackers-1> [accessed 6 January 2017]

Ollman, Bertell, Alienation, 2nd edn (Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Pr, 1998)

Pizzey, Erin, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours will Hear (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1974)

Regan, Tom, The Case For Animal Rights, 1st edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)

Ryan, Derek, Animal Theory, 1st edn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015)

Ruddick, Graham, "Mcdonald's Offer Staff The Chance To Get Off Zero-Hours Contracts", The Guardian, 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/15/mcdonalds-offer-staff-the-chance-to-get-off-zero-hours-contracts> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Rutherford, Burt, "Will Beef Cattle Genomics Be The Next Battleground?", Beef Magazine, 2017 <http://www.beefmagazine.com/genetics/will-beef-cattle-genomics-be-next-battleground> [accessed 13 February 2017]

"Sausage Factory | Special Reports | Guardian.Co.Uk", Theguardian.Com, 2003 <https://www.theguardian.com/food/focus/story/0,,951917,00.html> [accessed 12 February 2017]

Sinclair, Upton, Dr. Alicia Mischa Renfroe, and Dr. Barry Sears, The Jungle, 1st edn (New York: Signet Book, 2015)

Singer, Peter and Yuval Noah Harari, Animal Liberation, 1st edn (London: Bodley Head, 2015)

Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation, 1st edn (London: Penguin, 2002)

Schlosser, Eric, "'I Aimed For The Public's Heart, And. . .Hit It In The Stomach'", Tribunedigital-Chicagotribune, 2006 <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/0605210414_1_upton-sinclair-trust-free> [accessed 9 March 2017]

 "Socialism - Definition Of Socialism In English | Oxford Dictionaries", Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2017 <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/socialism> [accessed 8 January 2017]

 Shanker, Deena, "Big Beef Keeps Getting Bigger, Thanks To Growth Drugs With Unclear Safety Records", Fortune.Com, 2015 <http://fortune.com/2015/02/13/beef-cattle-growth-drug-safety-merck/> [accessed 3 February 2017]

"Slaughterhouse Workers | Food Empowerment Project", Foodispower.org, 2017 <http://www.foodispower.org/slaughterhouse-workers/> [accessed 1 February 2017]

Starmer, Elanor, Hogging The Market: How Powerful Meat Packers Are Changing Our Food System And What We Can Do About It, 1st edn (The Agribusiness Accountability Initiative, 2017), pp. 1-8 <http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/AAI_Issue_Brief_4.pdf> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Schroeder, Ted, Rodney Jones, James Mintert, and Andrew Barkley, THE IMPACTS OF CAPTIVE SUPPLIES ON THE FED CATTLE INDUSTRY, 1st edn (Manhatten: Kansas State University, 1991), pp. 1-30 <http://www.naiber.org/Publications/RILP/captive1.pdf> [accessed 1 March 2017]

"The Book", Carol J. Adams, 2016 <http://caroljadams.com/spom-the-book/> [accessed 21 December 2016]

"The Surprising Truth About Sausage", The Huffington Post, 2013 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/what-sausage-is-made-of_n_2272807.html> [accessed 12 February 2017].

"The Guardian View On The Value Of Fiction: Read Lies, And Learn The Truth | Editorial", The Guardian, 2015 <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/the-guardian-view-on-the-value-of-fiction-read-lies-and-learn-the-truth> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Top Documentary Films, The Science Behind Cattle Ranches, 2015 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3QqT9B7lPk> [accessed 12 February 2017]

Ungar, Rick, "Forbes Welcome", Forbes.com, 2014 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/09/18/the-obama-economy-vs-the-reagan-economy-its-literally-no-contest/#5b78acc238bc> [accessed 17 February 2017]

"U.S. Meat Industry Groups Urge Trump To Start Trade Talks With Japan After TPP Exit | The Japan Times", The Japan Times, 2017 <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/09/business/u-s-meat-industry-groups-urge-trump-start-trade-talks-japan-tpp-exit/> [accessed 14 March 2017]

Warren, Karen, An Unconventional History Of Western Philosophy, 1st edn (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009)

Wilson, Kim Summer Moon, "Hidden Crimes, Voiceless Victims: Inside Factory Farming And Slaughterhouses", Manataka.Org, 2017 <https://www.manataka.org/page1434.html> [accessed 6 March 2017]