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Welcome to The Jungle.

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Well, The Jungle of socialist muck-

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raker Upton Sinclair, at least.

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His 1905 novel The Jungle

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was all about how meat got

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packaged. And it was so gross

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that it forever changed both how

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we process meat, and how we

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treat meat processing workers.

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It also ruined a lot of dinnertimes. Well,

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The Jungle portrayed meatpacking as being pretty

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much as gross as you can possibly

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imagine—which, as it turns

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out, was pretty accurate. The plant

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was shown as dark, unsafe, and so

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dirty that you could probably get salmonella

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just by wearing flip-flops in their

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parking lot. Conditions in the meatpacking

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industry became so bad partially

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because of industrialization.

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Meat used to be one of those things people

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produced themselves or bought from

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close by, because meat doesn't stay exactly

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fresh after weeks traveling via

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Pony Express. Railroads

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changed all that, making shipping meat a relative

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breeze. Chicago,

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land of one thousand railroads,

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was the perfect hub from which

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to ship meat across the country, so meat

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packing started to be centralized

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there. Well, factories and assembly lines

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pushed all this work into cramped conditions

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and then made people do all the

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hacking and sawing all day, every day.

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Mechanization also introduced massive

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meat grinding machines and other horribly

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dangerous things that workers could

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die or become dismembered in.

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Not exactly a common occurrence

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on Ye Olde Family farm.

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But after The Jungle was published, things

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started to change. The federal government

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stepped in and passed the Pure Food

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and Drug Act and Meat

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Inspection Act in 1906.

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Thanks to Upton Sinclair, we have now

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reduced the amount of salmonella in

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the meat supply to a manageable

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amount. Still, ordering rare chicken

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is a bad idea. Don't do it, people.

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Of course, Sinclair wasn't totally happy with

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the change he inspired. Sure,

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food inspection was a great new thing. But Upton

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was a die-hard socialist.

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His main purpose with The Jungle

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had been to use the unsanitary

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conditions to build sympathy for

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Eastern European immigrant workers.

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He was way less worried about all the

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consumers all there shoveling down tainted meat.

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When Americans read Sinclair's book

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and felt concern over food safety,

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but not over worker well being,

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Sinclair famously claimed

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that he had aimed at America's heart, but only

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succeeded at hitting its stomach.

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But hey, uh, at least he didn't hit the funny bone.

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That thing hurts forever.

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