Beef’s Raw Edges – Views on Beef Quality


Bill Bullard, CEO of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund and Mike Callicrate of Callicrate Cattle Company discuss their issues with the taste of beef.

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In American Royal contest, steaks from cattle that weren’t fed growth promoters came out on top. Read more

Please visit Beef’s Raw Edges a Special Project by Mike McGraw with The Kansas City Star and video by Todd Feeback

 

Related: BIG FOOD Abuses Workforce

Chris Wright describes how workers have been treated by “BIG FOOD” in his paper: Deskilling on the Disassembly Line: Technological Change and Its Consequences in Beef-Packing Since the 1960s, Published 2012

The speed made possible by automation and deskilling is harmful not only for the injuries it causes and its tendency to make government inspection of carcasses more difficult, but also because its increase of pressure on supervisors to make employees work harder leads to considerable verbal and emotional abuse. A common form is the denial of bathroom breaks. Examples could be multiplied without end. According to one union official, when in 1997 he met with a large group of employees who worked at an IBP plant, “[p]eople were crying, talking about being covered in diarrhea the entire shift because the supervisor wouldn’t let them go to the bathroom.” The above-cited report by Nebraska Appleseed quotes comments such as the following: “The supervisors scream at you without having any reason.” “I know of three people who urinated and pooped in their pants and afterwards they just laugh at you.” “It would be good if they trained the supervisors how to manage personnel. There is a lot of screaming and that isn’t good.” “They treat you worse than animals….” Sexual harassment of women is also common.[55]

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