Race, Class, And Industrialized “Food”
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A snippet from “As Intimate as the Food We Eat: Race, Class, and Industrialized Food” by Eisa Nefertari Ulen:
“Just as African Americans were recruited by northern industry during The Great Migration, workers are recruited from small towns in Mexico to labor in the slaughterhouses. Workers who have lived around the Smithfield Plant for 10 to 15 years are vulnerable to early morning immigration raids, though the company bosses are never fined for hiring them in the first place. In the film, Pena [Eduardo Pena, a union organizer in Tar Heel, N.C.] asks us all to think of the mostly black and brown folk who are, he says, ‘processing your bacon, your holiday ham.’
“‘They have the same mentality toward the workers,’ Pena says, ‘as they do the hogs. You know, the hogs, they don’t really have to worry about their comfort because they’re temporary. They’re going to be killed. Likewise, he continues, the multinational corporations don’t worry about ‘the longevity’ of the worker. Covered with blood, feces, and urine from performing repetitious, mind-numbing tasks along the slaughterhouse assembly line, ‘basically you’re treated as a human machine.’
“Meat packing has become one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and only the most dispossessed see what really happens when warehoused animals are killed, cut, and covered in plastic.”
Emphasis has been added. The quotes come from Food, Inc.
Hat tip: Bea.
thanks so much for posting a selection of my article, “race, class, and industrialized food.” food inc is an incredible film and i urge everyone to go see it soon.
eisa