AtDDtA1: The Stockyards

[Joe Allonby]

I used to drive trucks from Boston to Oakland on a monthly basis. The route
would vary according to time of year and weather and additional stops. I
knew when the feed lots were coming miles before I passed them. The stench
of cattle packed in on top of each other was overwhelming. The
slaughterhouses were worse.

On 1/25/07, Joseph T <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> I once worked for a week in a slaughterhouse while traveling around the
> west. I scratched my hand  and it got badly infected. Too poor for medical
> help,  the hand got inflamed and I had 2 days of high fever. Don't know
> which was worse, the stench, or the sight of beef halves dragged across
> concrete floors smeared with blood, grease and who knows what else.
>
> TP's picture may be gone for Chicago but it is far from a thing of the
> past.  Eric Schlosser presented the following information in a recent talk
> on NPR.. 1)The entire town of Greely Colorado is saturated with a rank smell
> from flesh, and large "lagoons" of urine, blood and shit. 2)Under current
> U.S. law there are no clear limits for the presence of salmonilla in a
> meatpacking plant.3) FDA inspectors cannot conduct  inspections of plants
> without permission  and prior notice of the plant  . 4) He also said that
> best estimates are that about 5,000 US citizens die from contaminated meat
> every year for several years.  Isn't "deregulation"  swell?
>
>
> It is more than T P who sees the parallels between recent years and the
> start of the age of the robber barons.   On Jan 25, 2007, at 9:04 PM, Joe
> Allonby wrote:
>
> I don't know if anybody here has actually ever smelled a slaughterhouse,
> stockyard, or feedlot. I can attest that they are revolting. To learn that
> Chicago literally means "bad smell" is poetic justice. (No offense meant to
> Chicagoans - your bustling big city does not smell for the most part.)
>
> On 1/25/07, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > "In 1670, French trader Pierre Moreau built a cabin on the site where
> > the Chicago River empties into Lake Michigan (Schroeder, 1992:37). The
> > area was called "Chickagou," (bad smell) by the Potawatomi Indians
> > because of the skunk cabbage that choked the bogs draining into the
> > river."
> > http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm
> > (from Tim's post)
> >
> > "When leaves are bruised or crushed, the plant releases a strong odor
> > which smells like rotten meat."
> > http://www.fcps.edu/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/skunk_cabbage.htm
> >
> > Aha!
> >
> > 2007/1/24, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>:
> > >    "As they came in low over the Stockyards, the smell found them, the
> >
> > > smell and the uproar of flesh learning its mortality--like the dark
> > > conjugate of some daylit fiction they had flown here, as appeared
> > > increasingly likely, to promote.  Somewhere down there was the White
> > > City promised in the Columbian Exhibition brochures, somehwere among
> > > the tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke, the
> > > effluvia of butchery unremitting, into which the buildings of the
> > > leagues of city lying downwind retreated, like children into sleep
> > > which bringeth not reprieve from the day.  In the Stockyards, workers
> > > coming off shift, overwhelmingly of the Roman faith, able to detach
> > > from earth and blood for a few precious seconds, looked up at the
> > > airship in wonder, imagining a detachment of not necessarily helpful
> > > angels." (AtD, Pt. I, Ch. 2, p. 10)
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
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