Instead, it will suffice to examine how the meatpacking industry has changed, and how these changes have only exacerbated previously existing problems. In Fast Food Nation, author Eric Schlosser is invited to tour "one of the nation's largest" slaughterhouses by "someone who has access to the plant, who's upset by its working conditions" (Schlosser 169)
In The Jungle, Sinclair describes the unsanitary, unethical, or unsafe conditions in the meat packing industry a number of times, and demonstrates how a variety of factors contribute to these conditions, from corporate complicity to governmental incompetence. The main character, Jurgis, notes "the sharp trick of the floor-bosses whenever there chanced a come a 'slunk' calf," that is, the sometimes result of "a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved," into the slaughterhouse (Sinclair 73)