The Chain Never Stops by Eric Schlosser
Best known as the author who brought you Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser is also an award winning journalist who had been writing about the food industry in the United States for many years prior to the publication of the popular book.
Publicity surrounding his new movie, Food Inc., urged me to revisit some of Schlosser’s earlier writings during his stint writing for The Atlantic Monthly and other magazines and journals. This article was originally published in the July/August 2001 issue of Mother Jones and though it may be a few years old, it is well worth the time to read.
The article details the human side of the American industrial meat packing industry, and though the stomach turning descriptions of death and maiming rarely ever involve the animals, they don’t need to, there are plenty of human victims. The accounts of workers being burned, cut, crushed, impaled, and debilitated from repetitive stress injuries are sad. The accounts of those same injured, loyal workers being cast aside and cut off from medical care by their employers are heartbreaking.
