The meat industry are the people and companies engaged in modern industrialized livestock agriculture for the production, packing, preservation and marketing of meat (in contrast to dairy products, wool, etc.). In economics,
the meat industry is a fusion of primary (agriculture) and secondary
(industry) activity and hard to characterize strictly in terms of either
one alone. The greater part of the meat industry is the meat packing industry – the segment that handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of animals such as poultry, cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock.
The meat industry in 2013
A great portion of the ever-growing meat branch in the food industry involves intensive animal farming in which livestock are kept almost entirely indoors or in restricted outdoor settings like pens. Many aspects of the raising of animals for meat have become industrialized, even many practices more associated with smaller family farms, e.g. gourmet foods such as foie gras. The production of livestock is a heavily vertically integrated industry where the majority of supply chain stages are integrated and owned by one company.
animal diseases, e.g. mad-cow disease (BSE), avian flu, swine influenza (H1N1), avian influenza (H5N1), foot-and-mouth disease, some of which can spread to human consumers
climate change via greenhouse gases
generated by the meat industry is significantly greater than growing
and processing fruits and vegetables. The largest agricultural methane
source on the planet is livestock. Global greenhouse gas emissions from
animal-based foods are twice those of plant-based foods.
Many observers suggest that the expense of dealing with the above is grossly underestimated at present economic metrics and that true/full cost accounting would drastically raise the price of industrial meat.
Effects on livestock workers
American slaughterhouse workers are three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker. NPR
reports that pig and cattle slaughterhouse workers are nearly seven
times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries than average. The Guardian reports that, on average, there are two amputations a week involving slaughterhouse workers in the United States. On average, one employee of Tyson Foods, the largest meat producer in America, is injured and amputates a finger or limb per month. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that over a period of six years, in the UK
78 slaughter workers lost fingers, parts of fingers or limbs, more than
800 workers had serious injuries, and at least 4,500 had to take more
than three days off after accidents.
In a 2018 study in the Italian Journal of Food Safety, slaughterhouse
workers are instructed to wear ear protectors to protect their hearing
from the constant screams of animals being killed.
A 2004 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
found that "excess risks were observed for mortality from all causes,
all cancers, and lung cancer" in workers employed in the New Zealand
meat processing industry.
The worst thing, worse than the
physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit
[where hogs are killed] for any period of time—that let's [sic] you kill
things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's
walking around in the blood pit with you and think, 'God, that really
isn't a bad looking animal.' You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the
kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I
had to kill them – beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care.
— Gail A. Eisnitz,
The act of slaughtering animals, or of raising or transporting
animals for slaughter, may engender psychological stress or trauma in
the people involved. A 2016 study in Organization
indicates, "Regression analyses of data from 10,605 Danish workers
across 44 occupations suggest that slaughterhouse workers consistently
experience lower physical and psychological well-being along with
increased incidences of negative coping behavior."
A 2009 study by criminologist Amy Fitzgerald indicates, "slaughterhouse
employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes,
arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with
other industries."
As authors from the PTSD Journal explain, "These employees are hired to
kill animals, such as pigs and cows, that are largely gentle creatures.
Carrying out this action requires workers to disconnect from what they
are doing and from the creature standing before them. This emotional
dissonance can lead to consequences such as domestic violence, social
withdrawal, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD."
Slaughterhouses in the United States commonly illegally employ and exploit underage workers and illegal immigrants. In 2010, Human Rights Watch described slaughterhouse line work in the United States as a human rights crime. In a report by Oxfam America,
slaughterhouse workers were observed not being allowed breaks, were
often required to wear diapers, and were paid below minimum wage.
Possible alternatives
Cultured meat
(aka "clean meat") potentially offers some advantages in terms of
efficiency of resource use and animal welfare. It is, however, still at
an early stage of development and its advantages are still contested.
Increasing health care costs for an aging baby boom population suffering from obesity
and other food-related diseases, concerns about obesity in children
have spurred new ideas about healthy nutrition with less emphasis on
meat.
Native wild species like deer and bison in North America would be cheaper and potentially have less impact on the environment. The combination of more wild game meat options and higher costs for natural capital affected by the meat industry could be a building block towards a more sustainable livestock agriculture.
A growing trend towards vegetarian or vegan diets and the Slow Food movement are indicators of a changing consumer conscience in western countries. Producers on the other hand have reacted to consumer concerns by slowly shifting towards ecological or organic farming. The Alternative meat industry is projected to be worth 140 billion in the next 10 years.
Slaughterhouses that produce meat that is not intended for human consumption are sometimes referred to as knacker's yards or knackeries.
This is where animals are slaughtered that are not fit for human
consumption or that can no longer work on a farm, such as retired work horses.
Slaughtering animals on a large scale poses significant issues in terms of logistics, animal welfare, and the environment, and the process must meet public health
requirements. Due to public aversion in different cultures, determining
where to build slaughterhouses is also a matter of some consideration.
Frequently, animal rights
groups raise concerns about the methods of transport to and from
slaughterhouses, preparation prior to slaughter, animal herding, and the
killing itself.
Until modern times, the slaughter of animals generally took place in a
haphazard and unregulated manner in diverse places. Early maps of
London show numerous stockyards in the periphery of the city, where slaughter occurred in the open air or under cover such as wet markets. A term for such open-air slaughterhouses was shambles, and there are streets named "The Shambles" in some English and Irish towns (e.g., Worcester, York, Bandon) which got their name from having been the site on which butchers killed and prepared animals for consumption. Fishamble Street, Dublin was formerly a fish-shambles. Sheffield had 183 slaughterhouses in 1910, and it was estimated that there were 20,000 in England and Wales.
Reform movement
The slaughterhouse emerged as a coherent institution in the 19th century. A combination of health and social concerns, exacerbated by the rapid urbanisation experienced during the Industrial Revolution, led social reformers
to call for the isolation, sequester and regulation of animal
slaughter. As well as the concerns raised regarding hygiene and disease,
there were also criticisms of the practice on the grounds that the
effect that killing had, both on the butchers and the observers,
"educate[d] the men in the practice of violence and cruelty, so that
they seem to have no restraint on the use of it."
An additional motivation for eliminating private slaughter was to
impose a careful system of regulation for the "morally dangerous" task
of putting animals to death.
As a result of this tension, meat markets within the city were closed
and abattoirs built outside city limits. An early framework for the
establishment of public slaughterhouses was put in place in Paris in
1810, under the reign of the Emperor Napoleon. Five areas were set aside on the outskirts of the city and the feudal privileges of the guilds were curtailed.
As the meat requirements of the growing number of residents in London steadily expanded,
the meat markets both within the city and beyond attracted increasing levels of public disapproval. Meat had been traded at Smithfield Market as early as the 10th century. By 1726, it was regarded as "without question, the greatest in the world", by Daniel Defoe.
By the middle of the 19th century, in the course of a single year
220,000 head of cattle and 1,500,000 sheep would be "violently forced
into an area of five acres, in the very heart of London, through its
narrowest and most crowded thoroughfares".
By the early 19th century, pamphlets were being circulated arguing in
favor of the removal of the livestock market and its relocation outside
of the city due to the extremely low hygienic conditions as well as the brutal treatment of the cattle. In 1843, the Farmer's Magazine
published a petition signed by bankers, salesmen, aldermen, butchers
and local residents against the expansion of the livestock market. The Town Police Clauses Act 1847 created a licensing and registration system, though few slaughter houses were closed.
An Act of Parliament was eventually passed in 1852. Under its provisions, a new cattle-market was constructed in Copenhagen Fields, Islington. The new Metropolitan Cattle Market
was also opened in 1855, and West Smithfield was left as waste ground
for about a decade, until the construction of the new market began in
the 1860s under the authority of the 1860 Metropolitan Meat and Poultry
Market Act. The market was designed by architect Sir Horace Jones and was completed in 1868.
A cut and cover railway tunnel was constructed beneath the market to create a triangular junction with the railway between Blackfriars and King's Cross.
This allowed animals to be transported into the slaughterhouse by train
and the subsequent transfer of animal carcasses to the Cold Store
building, or direct to the meat market via lifts.
At the same time, the first large and centralized slaughterhouse in Paris was constructed in 1867 under the orders of Napoleon III at the Parc de la Villette and heavily influenced the subsequent development of the institution throughout Europe.
Regulation and expansion
Blueprint for a mechanized public abattoir, designed by slaughterhouse reformer Benjamin Ward Richardson
These slaughterhouses were regulated by law to ensure good standards
of hygiene, the prevention of the spread of disease and the minimization
of needless animal cruelty. The slaughterhouse had to be equipped with a
specialized water supply system to effectively clean the operating area
of blood and offal. Veterinary scientists, notably George Fleming and John Gamgee, campaigned for stringent levels of inspection to ensure that epizootics such as rinderpest
(a devastating outbreak of the disease covered all of Britain in 1865)
would not be able to spread. By 1874, three meat inspectors were
appointed for the London area, and the Public Health Act 1875
required local authorities to provide central slaughterhouses (they
were only given powers to close unsanitary slaughterhouses in 1890).
Yet the appointment of slaughterhouse inspectors and the establishment
of centralised abattoirs took place much earlier in the British
colonies, such as the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria, and in
Scotland where 80% of cattle were slaughtered in public abattoirs by
1930. In Victoria the Melbourne Abattoirs Act 1850 (NSW)
"confined the slaughtering of animals to prescribed public abattoirs,
while at the same time prohibiting the killing of sheep, lamb, pigs or
goats at any other place within the city limits".
Animals were shipped alive to British ports from Ireland, from Europe
and from the colonies and slaughtered in large abattoirs at the ports.
Conditions were often very poor.
Attempts were also made throughout the British Empire to reform
the practice of slaughter itself, as the methods used came under
increasing criticism for causing undue pain to the animals. The eminent
physician, Benjamin Ward Richardson,
spent many years in developing more humane methods of slaughter. He
brought into use no fewer than fourteen possible anesthetics for use in
the slaughterhouse and even experimented with the use of electric
current at the Royal Polytechnic Institution. As early as 1853, he designed a lethal chamber that would gas animals to death relatively painlessly, and he founded the Model Abattoir Society in 1882 to investigate and campaign for humane methods of slaughter.
The invention of refrigeration
and the expansion of transportation networks by sea and rail allowed
for the safe exportation of meat around the world. Additionally,
meat-packing millionaire Philip Danforth Armour's invention of the "disassembly line" greatly increased the productivity and profit margin of the meat packing industry: "according to some, animal slaughtering became the first mass-production
industry in the United States." This expansion has been accompanied by
increased concern about the physical and mental conditions of the
workers along with controversy over the ethical and environmental
implications of slaughtering animals for meat.
The Edinburgh abattoir, which was built in 1910, had well lit
laboratories, hot and cold water, gas, microscopes and equipment for
cultivating organisms. The English 1924 Public Health (Meat) Regulations
required notification of slaughter to enable inspection of carcasses
and enabled inspected carcasses to be marked.
The development of slaughterhouses was linked with industrial
expansion of by-products. By 1932 the British by-product industry was
worth about £97 million a year, employing 310,000 people. The Aberdeen
slaughterhouse sent hooves to Lancashire to make glue, intestines to
Glasgow for sausages and hides to the Midland tanneries.
In January 1940 the British government took over the 16,000
slaughterhouses and by 1942 there were only 779.
Design
Slaughterhouse waste
In the latter part of the 20th century, the layout and design of most U.S. slaughterhouses was influenced by the work of Temple Grandin.
She suggested that reducing the stress of animals being led to
slaughter may help slaughterhouse operators improve efficiency and
profit. In particular she applied an understanding of animal psychology to design pens and corrals
which funnel a herd of animals arriving at a slaughterhouse into a
single file ready for slaughter. Her corrals employ long sweeping curves
so that each animal is prevented from seeing what lies ahead and just
concentrates on the hind quarters of the animal in front of it. This
design – along with the design elements of solid sides, solid crowd
gate, and reduced noise at the end point – work together to encourage
animals forward in the chute and to not reverse direction.
Mobile design
Beginning
in 2008 the Local Infrastructure for Local Agriculture, a non-profit
committed to revitalizing opportunities for "small farmers and
strengthening the connection between local supply and demand",
constructed a mobile slaughterhouse facility in efforts for small
farmers to process meat quickly and cost effectively. Named the Modular
Harvest System, or M.H.S., it received USDA
approval in 2010. The M.H.S. consists of three separate trailers: One
for slaughtering, one for consumable body parts, and one for other body
parts. Preparation of individual cuts is done at a butchery or other
meat preparation facility.
The standards and regulations governing slaughterhouses vary
considerably around the world. In many countries the slaughter of
animals is regulated by custom and tradition rather than by law. In the
non-Western world, including the Arab world, the Indian sub-continent, etc., both forms of meat are available: one which is produced in modern mechanized slaughterhouses, and the other from local butcher shops.
In some communities animal slaughter and permitted species may be controlled by religious laws, most notably halal for Muslims and kashrut for Jewish
communities. This can cause conflicts with national regulations when a
slaughterhouse adhering to the rules of religious preparation is located
in some Western countries.
In Jewish law, captive bolts and other methods of pre-slaughter
paralysis are generally not permissible, due to it being forbidden for
an animal to be stunned prior to slaughter. Various halal food
authorities have more recently permitted the use of a recently developed
fail-safe system of head-only stunning
where the shock is non-fatal, and where it is possible to reverse the
procedure and revive the animal after the shock. The use of electronarcosis
and other methods of dulling the sensing has been approved by the
Egyptian Fatwa Committee. This allows these entities to continue their
religious techniques while keeping accordance to the national
regulations.
In some societies, traditional cultural and religious aversion to slaughter led to prejudice against the people involved. In Japan, where the ban on slaughter of livestock for food was lifted in the late 19th century, the newly found slaughter industry drew workers primarily from villages of burakumin, who traditionally worked in occupations relating to death (such as executioners and undertakers). In some parts of western Japan, prejudice faced by current and former residents of such areas (burakumin "hamlet people") is still a sensitive issue. Because of this, even the Japanese word for "slaughter" (屠殺 tosatsu) is deemed politically incorrect by some pressure groups as its inclusion of the kanji for "kill" (殺) supposedly portrays those who practise it in a negative manner.
Some countries have laws that exclude specific animal species or
grades of animal from being slaughtered for human consumption,
especially those that are taboo food. The former Indian Prime MinisterAtal Bihari Vajpayee suggested in 2004 introducing legislation banning the slaughter of cows throughout India, as Hinduism holds cows as sacred
and considers their slaughter unthinkable and offensive. This was often
opposed on grounds of religious freedom. The slaughter of cows and the
importation of beef into the nation of Nepal are strictly forbidden.
Freezing works
Refrigeration
technology allowed meat from the slaughterhouse to be preserved for
longer periods. This led to the concept as the slaughterhouse as a
freezing works. Prior to this, canning was an option.
Freezing works are common in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
In countries where meat is exported for a substantial profit the
freezing works were built near docks, or near transport infrastructure.
Mobile poultry processing units (MPPUs) follow the same
principles, but typically require only one trailer and, in much of the
United States, may legally operate under USDA exemptions not available
to red meat processors. Several MPPUs have been in operation since before 2010, under various models of operation and ownership.
Most countries have laws in regard to the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses. In the United States, there is the Humane Slaughter Act
of 1958, a law requiring that all swine, sheep, cattle, and horses be
stunned unconscious with application of a stunning device by a trained
person before being hoisted up on the line. There is some debate over
the enforcement of this act. This act, like those in many countries,
exempts slaughter in accordance to religious law, such as koshershechita and dhabiha halal. Most strict interpretations of kashrut require that the animal be fully sensible when its carotid artery is cut.
The novel The Jungle
presented a fictionalized account of unsanitary conditions in
slaughterhouses and the meatpacking industry during the 1800s. This led
directly to an investigation commissioned directly by President Theodore Roosevelt, and to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration. A much larger body of regulation deals with the public health and worker safety regulation and inspection.
In 1997, Gail Eisnitz, chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association (HFA), released the book Slaughterhouse.
Within, she unveils the interviews of slaughterhouse workers in the
U.S. who say that, because of the speed with which they are required to
work, animals are routinely skinned while apparently alive and still
blinking, kicking and shrieking. Eisnitz argues that this is not only
cruel to the animals but also dangerous for the human workers, as cows
weighing several thousands of pounds thrashing around in pain are likely
to kick out and debilitate anyone working near them.
This would imply that certain slaughterhouses throughout the
country are not following the guidelines and regulations spelled out by
the Humane Slaughter Act,
requiring all animals to be put down and thus insusceptible to pain by
some form, typically electronarcosis, before undergoing any form of
violent action.
According to the HFA, Eiznitz interviewed slaughterhouse workers
representing over two million hours of experience, who, without
exception, told her that they have beaten, strangled, boiled and
dismembered animals alive or have failed to report those who do. The
workers described the effects the violence has had on their personal
lives, with several admitting to being physically abusive or taking to
alcohol and other drugs.
The HFA alleges that workers are required to kill up to 1,100
hogs an hour and end up taking their frustration out on the animals. Eisnitz interviewed one worker, who had worked in ten slaughterhouses, about pig production. He told her:
Hogs get stressed out pretty easy.
If you prod them too much, they have heart attacks. If you get a hog in
the chute that's had the shit prodded out of him and has a heart attack
or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole. You try to do this by clipping the hipbone.
Then you drag him backwards. You're dragging these hogs alive, and a
lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen hams –
thighs – completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out. If
the hog collapses near the front of the chute, you shove the meat hook
into his cheek and drag him forward.
American slaughterhouse workers are three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker. NPR
reports that pig and cattle slaughterhouse workers are nearly seven
times more likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries than average. The Guardian reports that on average there are two amputations a week involving slaughterhouse workers in the United States. On average, one employee of Tyson Foods, the largest meat producer in America, is injured and amputates a finger or limb per month. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that over a period of six years, in the UK
78 slaughter workers lost fingers, parts of fingers or limbs, more than
800 workers had serious injuries, and at least 4,500 had to take more
than three days off after accidents.
In a 2018 study in the Italian Journal of Food Safety, slaughterhouse
workers are instructed to wear ear protectors to protect their hearing
from the loud noises in the facility. A 2004 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
found that "excess risks were observed for mortality from all causes,
all cancers, and lung cancer" in workers employed in the New Zealand
meat processing industry.
The worst thing, worse than the
physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit
[where hogs are killed] for any period of time – that lets you kill
things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's
walking around in the blood pit with you and think, "God, that really
isn't a bad looking animal." You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the
kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I
had to kill them – beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care.
— Gail A. Eisnitz,
Working at slaughterhouses often leads to a high amount of psychological trauma. A 2016 study in Organization
indicates, "Regression analyses of data from 10,605 Danish workers
across 44 occupations suggest that slaughterhouse workers consistently
experience lower physical and psychological well-being along with
increased incidences of negative coping behavior."
A 2009 study by criminologist Amy Fitzgerald indicates, "slaughterhouse
employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes,
arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with
other industries."
As authors from the PTSD Journal explain, "These employees are hired to
kill animals, such as pigs and cows that are largely gentle creatures.
Carrying out this action requires workers to disconnect from what they
are doing and from the creature standing before them. This emotional
dissonance can lead to consequences such as domestic violence, social
withdrawal, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD."
Starting in the 1980s, Cargill, Conagra Brands, Tyson Foods and other large food companies moved most slaughterhouse operations to rural areas of the Southern United States which were more hostile to unionization efforts. Slaughterhouses in the United States commonly illegally employ and exploit underage workers and undocumented immigrants. In 2010, Human Rights Watch described slaughterhouse line work in the United States as a human rights crime. In a report by Oxfam America,
slaughterhouse workers were observed not being allowed breaks, were
often required to wear diapers, and were paid below minimum wage.
Child labor in the United States was a common phenomenon
across the economy in the 19th century. Outside agriculture, it
gradually declined in the early 20th century, except in the South which
added children in textile and other industries. Child labor remained
common in the agricultural sector until compulsory school laws were
enacted by the states. In the North state laws prohibited work in mines
and later in factories. A national law
was passed in 1916 but it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918. A
1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s an effort to pass a
constitutional amendement failed, because of opposition from the South
and from Catholics. Outside of farming child labor was steadily
declining in the 20th century and the New Deal in 1938 finally ended
child labor in factories and mines. Child labor has always been a factor
in agriculture and that continues into the 21st century.
History
Colonial and early national
In
an overwhelmingly rural society, farmers discovered that children as
young as six or seven could usefully handle chores assigned along gender
lines. In the cities, at a time when schools were uncommon outside New
England, girls had household and child care chores while boys at about
age 12 were apprenticed to craftsmen. Colonial America had as surplus
of good farmland and a shortage of workers, so criminals in England
kidnapped London youth to spirit them away for resale in Virginia.
Parliament made it a priority to catch and prosecute offenders.
At the age of 13, orphan children were sent into a trade or
domestic work due to laws that sought to prevent idle children from
becoming a burden to society.
In towns after 1810 or so the apprenticeship system gave way to factory
employment for poor children, and school attendance for the middle
classes.
New England began to industrialize after 1810, especially with textile mills that hired entire families.
After 1840, mills started to shift aways from families, hiring older
individuals especially new immigrants from Ireland and Canada.
19th century
As
the North industrialized in the first half of the 19th century,
factories and mines hired young workers for a variety of tasks.
According to the 1900 census,
of the children ages ten to fifteen 18 percent were employed: 1,264,000
boys and 486,000 girls. Most worked on family farms. Every decade
following 1870, the number of children in the workforce increased, with
the percentage not dropping until the 1920s. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with both parents and could be hired for only $2 a week.
Their parents could both work in the mill and watch their children at
the same time. Children had an advantage as their small statures were
useful for fixing machinery and squeezing into small spaces. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities.
In mining towns, many parents often helped their children thwart child
laws that did exist since miners were paid per carload of coal and any
additional help to move the coal meant an increase in pay.
Farming
1900
ad for McCormick farm machines: "McCormick machines are so easy to
handle that your boy can successfully operate them in the field"
The reformers were crusading against factories, which they considered
a debilitating to growing children and threatened to damage them
permanently. They saw a farm labor as an entirely different
matter—indeed, an American ideal. According to activist Alexander McKelway
in 1905, open-air farm work was "beneficial in developing a strong
physical constitution". Harvest season did not interfere with the
scheduled school year, he added, and being under the beneficial and
watchful eye of parents strengthened the family.
Using census data processed by Lee Craig, Robert Whaples concludes for the Midwest in the mid-19th century:
For each child aged 7 to 12 the
family's output increased by about $16 per year—only 7 percent of the
[$230] income produced by a typical adult male. Teen-aged females
boosted family farm income by only about $22, while teen-aged males
boosted income by $58. Because of these low productivity levels,
families couldn't really strike it rich by putting their children to
work. When viewed as an investment, children had a strikingly negative
rate of return because the costs of raising them generally exceeded the
value of the work they performed.
From 1910 to 1920, more than 60 percent of child workers in the United States were employed in agriculture.
A son born into a farm family was worth real cash in terms of
productivity and needing to hire less outside labor, as well as an heir
to the family property.
Some children preferred work over school since earning wages earned
them respect in their homes, they were punished in the form of corporal punishment at school, and did not like to read or write instead of working.
According to Kent Hendrickson, two New Deal laws had a major impact on sugar beet farming in the Great Plains. The Jones-Costigan Act of 1934
and the Sugar Act of 1937 improved working conditions somewhat.
However, they were written primarily to aid the growers and the sugar
processing mills. Much of the field work was done by migrant Mexicans,
who faced low wages, child labor and poor housing.
Early 20th century
Children working with mules in a coal mine in West Virginia in 1908.
In the early 20th century, opponents of child labor cooperated with other Progressive Era reformers and American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions to organize at the state level. In 1904 a major national organization emerged, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).
In state after state reformers launched crusades to pass laws
restricting child labor, with the ultimate goals of rescuing young
bodies and increasing school attendance. The frustrations included the
Supreme Court striking down two national laws as unconstitutional, and
weak enforcement of state laws that impacted local business.
An effective tool was publicity, especially photographs in muckraking magazines that showed bad working conditions. The most successful of their crusaders was photographer Lewis Hine.
In 1908 he became the photographer for the NCLC, which had good contact
with the muckraking press. Over the next decade, Hine focused on the
negative side of child labor.
In the North, reformers were often successful in getting legislation on
the books, but were disappointed when enforcement was handled by
patronage appointees who proved reluctant to challenge the business
community.
Meanwhile, in the South legislation was opposed by rapidly growing
mills that undercut Northern competitors with cheap wages. Starting in
1898, Montgomery, Alabama, minister Edgar Gardner Murphy crusaded to end child labor across the South but had little success.
"Addie
Card, 12 years. Spinner in North Pormal Cotton Mill. Vt." by Lewis
Hine, 1912. Hine's photographs were designed to turn public opinion
against child labor. This image was used on a 1998 US stamp to
commemorate the passage of the Keating–Owen Act.
In Congress a leading proponent was Senator Albert J. Beveridge Republican of Indiana. He tried—and failed—to get the first national bill passed.
Unlike the Republican leadership, the Democratic leadership was not
beholden to employers, and thus was more supportive of controls on child
labor and other laws promoted by labor unions. Alexander McKelway (1866-1918), a staunch supporter of Woodrow Wilson, campaigned for such laws as the 1916 Keating–Owen Act. The Keating–Owen Act banned child labor but was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918.
A similar 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s an effort to pass
a constitutional amendement failed, because of opposition from the
South and from Catholics.
The South finally passed compulsory school laws and by the late 1920s
children under 15 were rarely hired by mills or factories. Finally in
the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 the New Deal successfully ended most child labor outside agriculture.
14 year old newsboy working late when tips were good; photo by Lewis Hine, 1910.
Newsboys
sold the latest edition of daily newspapers on the street. They worked
as contractors without benefits. Age was a disadvantage as younger boys
collected more tips. The newspaper publishers needed their work and
editors shielded them from child labor laws while romanticizing their
entrepreneurial enterprise and downplaying their squalid life under
dangerous conditions.
The most sweeping federal law that restricts the employment and abuse of child workers is the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act
(FLSA). Its child labor provisions were designed to protect the
educational opportunities of youth and prohibit their employment in jobs
that are detrimental to their health and safety. FLSA raised the
coverage to youth under 18 years of age and lists hazardous occupations
too dangerous for them to perform. It does not apply to agricultural
workers, which has always been the arena for most child labor. Under
the FLSA, for non-agricultural jobs, children under 14 may not be
employed, children between 14 and 16 may be employed in allowed
occupations during limited hours, and children between 16 and 17 may be
employed for unlimited hours in non-hazardous occupations.
Many of the restrictions were temporarily put on hold in World War II,
as enlarging factory employment became a national priority. The number
of employed youth, ages 14 to 17, tripled from 870,000 in 1940 to 2.8
million in 1944, as high school enrollment dropped by one million.
Motivating factors included patriotism, materialism, and dislike of
school.
In agriculture, studies in the 1960s showed Hispanic and other
families employed as farm laborers needed the income generated by their
children. However the children showed severe educational retardation.
States have varying laws covering youth employment. Each state
has minimum requirements such as earliest age a child may begin working,
number of hours a child is allowed to work during the day, number of
hours a child is allowed to work during the week. The United States Department of Labor lists the minimum requirements for agricultural work in each state.
Individual states have a wide range of restrictions on labor by
minors, often requiring work permits for minors who are still enrolled
in high school, limiting the times and hours that minors can work by age
and imposing additional safety regulations.
21st century
By 2023, states such as Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Jersey had loosened child labor restrictions following the lessening of the COVID-19 pandemic severity, with violations increasing nationwide as a tight labor market increased worker demand.
Modifications included lowering the age in which children could work
certain jobs, expanding the number of and timing of hours they could be
required to work, often to include school time, and shielding businesses
from civil liability for work-related injuries, illnesses, or deaths
sustained by such workers. For example, legislation in Iowa would allow children to work in meat packing and light industry factories. According to the Economic Policy Institute,
from 2015 to 2022, the number of minors employed in violation of child
labor laws increased by 283% and the number of minors employed in
violation of hazardous occupation orders increased by 94%.
In 2023, a 16-year-old boy died in an accident at a Mississippi
poultry plant. Just a month prior, it was revealed that meatpacking and
produce firms were allegedly hiring underage migrants in at least 11
states.
In Louisville, Kentucky, two 10-year-old children were illegally
working at McDonald's, where they handled deep fryer equipment and
worked as late as 2 a.m., receiving little to no payment, costing the
franchise a $212,000 fine that would later reveal that more than 300
minors were illegally working for the establishment.
In the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an albatross
follows a ship setting out to sea, which is considered a sign of good
luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow,
an act that will curse the ship and cause it to suffer terrible
mishaps. Unable to speak due to lack of water, the ship's crew let the
mariner know through their glances that they blame him for their plight
and they tie the bird around his neck as a sign of his guilt. From this
arose the image of an albatross around the neck as metaphor for a burden
that is difficult to escape.
This sense is catalogued in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1883, but it seems only to have entered general usage in the 1960s.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
Robert Walton mentions the poem by name and says of an upcoming journey
that "I shall kill no albatross", clearly a reference to the poem by
Shelley's close acquaintance, Coleridge. Frankenstein was first published in 1818, long before the term was introduced into the Oxford Dictionary.
Charles Baudelaire's collection of poems Les Fleurs du mal contains a poem entitled "L'Albatros"
(1857) about men on ships who catch the albatrosses for sport. In the
final stanza, he goes on to compare the poets to the birds — exiled from
the skies and then weighed down by their giant wings, till death.
In the 1940 film The Sea Hawk starring Errol Flynn, Albatross is the name of Captain Thorpe's pirate ship.
In the 1979 film The Fog by John Carpenter, a radio-station promo is possessed by ghostly forces to speak out and the word albatross is used to tell of the curse on Antonio Bay.
In the 1987 film "Tin Men" Ernest Tilley, played by Danny de Vito, refers to his unfaithful wife as "An albatross around my neck! You're welcome to her. Keep her, and may you both rot in Hell!"
In the 1996 Ridley Scott film White Squall, a fictionalized account of the Ocean Academy's ship Albatross,
the ship's captain Christopher Sheldon makes mention of the albatross
being a very good omen which "embodied the spirits of lost sailors".
"Only bad luck if you kill one," he added.
In the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,
as the wind picks up and the ship finally breaks out of the doldrums,
an albatross is spotted following the ship. When an attempt is made to
shoot the bird, the ship's doctor is shot instead.
In the 2005 Joss Whedon film Serenity, Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of Serenity defends the notion that River Tam is an albatross to the crew and later to the Operative. He says that the albatross was good luck until "some idiot killed it". When Malcolm is speaking, he then adds to Inara,
"Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint" in a reference to the
Coleridge poem. At the end of the film, he calls River "Little
Albatross".
In the 2014 film Against the Sun,
Gene shoots an albatross, which they eat. Chief Dixon is notably upset
about this, saying, "I can't believe you shot an albatross."
Music
In music journalism, the term albatross
is sometimes used metaphorically to describe the mixed blessing and
curse of a song that becomes so popular it overshadows the rest of the
artist's work.
Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the tracks on the fifth Iron Maiden album Powerslave, 1984.
Musical
The musical Thoroughly Modern Millie refers to the albatross in a song called "Forget About the Boy".
The musical Kinky Boots refers to the albatross in a song called "Not My Father's Son".
The metalcore band Anterrabae has a song titled "An Albatross Around the Neck".
The band Alesana has a song called "Heavy Hangs The Albatross".
Swedish DJ AronChupa
has a song titled "I'm an Albatraoz" which contrasts the attributed
personalities of a mouse and an albatross as an allegory of personal
growth and female empowerment.
South Korean boy group B.A.P have a song titled "Albatross" on their 5th EP Carnival.
The heavy metal band Iron Maiden
references the albatross in their song "Rime of the Ancient Mariner",
which is based on the poem of the same title by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Jeff Williams' song "Bad Luck Charm" contains the line "I'm a cursed
black cat, I'm an albatross, I'm a mirror broken, Sad to say, I'm your
bad luck charm".
Josh Ritter
refers to a lingering albatross in his song "Monster Ballad". The
characters are lost in the desert after having been lost at sea.
In "Albatross", the first track on Public Image Limited's 1979 album Metal Box, the cryptic reference to "Getting rid of the Albatross" is repeated throughout the song.
Rhett Miller's song "This Is What I Do" references everyone having "an Albatross".
The song "Morter" from Canadian electronic group Skinny Puppy's 1996 album The Process alludes to the albatross as a burden of truth.
The band Starset references the albatross in their song, "Diving Bell," with the lyrics, "the albatross crash-lands."
Alternative musician St. Vincent references "the albatross smouldering on my shoulder" in her song "Teenage Talk".
Television
In Season 2 Episode 18 of Route 66 (TV series) entitled "How much a pound is albatross?", the guest character Vicki (played by Julie Newmar) refers to her effort to evade a burden of grief: "I left a trail of buried albatross from coast to coast."
In Young Justice Outsiders Season 3 episode 25 Forager as Fred Bugg (with two Gs) says that his glamor stone has become an albatross around his neck.
In Season 2, episode 22 on the Season Finale of Riverdale
Alice Cooper says to her daughter Polly “We all have our Albatrosses
Polly” speaking of visiting her husband, convicted murderer Hal Cooper
in prison.
In season 1, episode 18 of Miami Vice,
Detective Switek calls his colleague, Detective Zito, an albatross,
after he blows up their undercover operation: "We blew it, Lieutenant,
because I'm teamed up with an albatross".
In Showtime's Weeds,
the main character Nancy refers to another character as, "[an]
albatross: my own personal cinder block." Season five episode five.
In the HBO series Deadwood, a character refers to the debt owed to blacks because of slavery as an "albatross around the white man's neck." Episode 304.
In the TNT series Memphis Beat, a character refers to family as "an albatross around the neck of a great man" (Episode 107).
In The New Adventures of Flipper, episode 417 "Mystery Ship", an abandoned boat, a yawl, is discovered with no one aboard. She is named The Albatross.
She isn't registered and doesn't appear in any databases. She appears
to be sea worthy, but strange accidents occur. Eventually, the couple
who salvaged her argue over whether to keep her or not. Upon further
search of the boat, a boat builder's plaque is found. The Albatross
was built by a boat builder who went out of business in the late 1930s.
This discovery leads to a newspaper article about a murder aboard the
boat, the Sweet Charlotte. Apparently over time anyone coming in contact with her has bad luck. She has gone from being named the Sweet Charlotte to The Albatross.
In season 7, episode 11 of the series The X-Files, entitled "Closure", Special Agent Fox Mulder
discovers a child's handprints embedded in concrete in front of a house
in the base housing area of what appears to be a decommissioned U.S.
Air Force base. The prints are presumably made by his sister, Samantha,
after her abduction when she was eight years old. The house where he
finds the handprints—and later a diary, also presumably Samantha's—is
located on Albatross St.; possibly a reference to how Fox's quest to
find information about the whereabouts of his missing sister has been
his albatross since she was taken from him.
In Season 2, episode 8 of the series Ed,
Jim (Molly Hudson's romantic interest) refers to her old car 'Sadie'
that she buys back after selling (due to emotional attachment), as a
'Metal Albatross', due to its failure to function, and the fact that
they have to push it all the way to her house after buying it back.
In episode 209 of the show Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Master Shake states, "We got us a super star, and we've got two
albacores that are hanging around my neck." Frylock responds, "It's
albatrosses". Master Shake states this to show frustration to his two
roommates in response to losing, again, at a bar trivia game.
In Season 5, episode 21 of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,
Sgt. Carter calls Gomer an albatross because he messed up a marine
exercise, and is told to go back to the base. When Gomer asks how he'll
get back, Carter sarcastically replies,"You can fly, Pyle. You're an
albatross, remember?!"
In season 4 of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, Nucky Thompson lives in a seaside motel named "The Albatross"; a metaphor for the mental burden his character suffers.
In season 4, episode 4 of Orange Is The New Black Alex tells Red she is sorry for sharing 'This Albatross of a secret' with her.
The famous BBC TV comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus
broadcast a sketch called "Intermission" in Episode 13 of series 1 on
11 January 1970. Although only 40 seconds long, this sketch is one of
the most memorable and remembered. In it a man, played by John Cleese,
is dressed as an ice-cream girl in a film theatre, although instead of
the regular movie snacks she is selling a dead albatross. A man (Terry
Jones) approaches her and asks for two choc ices. The girl aggressively
makes clear she only sells an albatross and continues shouting to draw
attention to her merchandise, while the potential customer keeps asking
questions about the product, like "What flavour is it?" and "Do you get
wafers with it?". Finally the man buys two albatrosses for nine pence
each. The salesgirl then shouts she is selling "gannet on a stick."
Later during the episode, several other characters in other sketches
shout "Albatross" for seemingly no reason at all.
In an episode of Stir Crazy, Harry and Skip refer to Crawford (whom they've sighted through their binoculars) as "the man whose albatross we've been wearing."
In season 7, episode 4 (“Kuwait”) of Blacklist, Harold
confronts Raymond Reddington in a cemetery with a gravestone of Daniel
Hutton, a man Harold served with overseas and believed to have been shot
and killed in Kuwait in 1989. Harold asks Reddington if he knew the
whole time that Hutton had not been dead and actually had been a POW all this time. Reddington claims that “I gave that flash drive to you so you could put the whole incident behind you, not carry it like an albatross around your neck.”
Books
The cover art for Michael Spivak's A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Vol.2, is a painting by the author featuring a sailing ship beneath a dark stormy sky, full of dead jesters and a single living jester having three albatrosses hanging from ropes around his neck, respectively labeled "Cartan", "Riemann", and "Gauss".
The character of Prince Albatross in Wings of Fire Legends: Darkstalker
has magic and is greatly valued by his tribe for his abilities.
However, his powers make him suddenly lose his soul and murder almost
the entire SeaWing royal family.
Video games
In the fantasy MMORPGRuneScape, This Albatross, known formerly as The Scourge,
is the flagship of the infamous pirate lord Rabid Jack. Jack used the
ship as his main offensive centre when he attacked Mos Le'Harmless in an
effort to gain complete control over the Eastern Sea. When this failed,
Jack renamed his ship "This Albatross", which he said would be a curse
upon pirates forever. Although the ship was likely destroyed after the
latter Battle of Mos Le'Harmless, recent activity suggests the ship may
have been revived along with its thought-dead (now seemingly undead)
captain.
In the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite, the vigor
(potion) "Undertow" is advertised by the vigor dispenser machine with
the words "Ancient mariner, let the vigor Undertow disperse the hated
albatross".
In the 2010 video game, Alpha Protocol
an intelligence agency named "G22" is led by a man under the alias of
Albatross, who has the habit of encountering you by chance and often,
depending on the players actions, offers valuable information which
serves to reinforce the name.
In the 2009 text-based browser game, Fallen London, the player character can dream of shooting an albatross and the consequences that come from it.
In the 2004 video game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines,
Camarilla Prince Sebastian Lacroix expresses to the player the burden
of his position as Prince of L.A. and his worry over the consequences of
calling a blood hunt upon Anarch leader - Nines Rodriguez - "The folly
of leadership is knowing that no matter what you do, behind your back,
there's hundreds certain that their own solution is the sounder one and
that your decision was the by-product of a whimsical dart toss. I
pronounce the blast sentence, and I soak the critical fallout. I make
the decisions no-one else will. Leadership...I wear the albatross and
the bullseye."
Unreal Tournament 2004 featured a map called "DM-1on1-Albatross"
Hearthstone
Descent of Dragons expansion has a card named "Bad Luck Albatross",
clearly referring to the poem as when it is killed, it dilutes the
opponent deck with two bad draws.
_crop.jpg)
